The pitch-black sidewalks of L.A. become the primordial base out of which the human shape evolves, eyes shining out of the blackness, as our heroes-U.S. Treasury agents hunting down a counterfeiting ring-descend into the world of “this cagey gang (who) use our own methods-surveillance, shadowing...” The suggestion of the doppelganger-cop and counterfeiter as two sides of the same tarnished coin-is more than a suggestion. The dialogue has the crisp cynicism that was borrowed and then parodied in later films (“Have you ever spent ten nights in a steam bath, looking for a man?”). And the action is punctuated by moments of bizarrely staged violence-Wallace Ford meeting his Maker in the dreamlike fog of the baths is a sequence unmatched in film noir. Cinematographer Alton's light sources are scattershot, threatening. He makes “a thousand points of light” look paltry-but T-Men's world is neither kind nor gentle.