Critics Naomi Wise and Michael Goodwin once described Samuel Fuller as "an American primitive whose vision directly contradicts that of Grandma Moses." Adding U.S.A. to the title of this, his most brutal film, was no mere ploy on Fuller's part, for it is also his most scathing indictment of an apathetic American public that has allowed the Syndicate to become big business and big politics. Twelve-year-old Tolly Devlin watches his father beaten to death by four punks; as an adult, Tolly (Cliff Robertson) vows revenge. He learns that three of the men are involved in a local crime ring, which he infiltrates in cooperation with the FBI. Playing these two rival elements of the crime world against each other (allowing Fuller, like Lang in M, to point out some touchy links between them), Tolly demonstrates a vigilante passion that equals and then surpasses the violence of his enemies. "Every shot is a smack in the eye," one critic wrote, "every cut, a shock cut."