Mark Dixon (Dana Andrews) don't take no guff. Get in his face, cross him, and things happen, bad things. Trouble is he's a cop, a tough cop who's lost his balance. He's got no room for ambiguity. It's either right or wrong. Then he crosses the line: rousting a suspect, Dixon accidentally kills him, then covers it up. As luck would have it, Dixon's lax lieutenant (Karl Malden) assigns him the case and so he points an incriminating finger at a local thug, Tommy Scalise (Gary Merrill), for the dirty deed. Unlike Laura, Whirlpool, or Angel Face, Otto Preminger's darkly lit Sidewalk leads to a strictly working class neighborhood, the grim brownstones of lower Manhattan. The son of a “thief,” Dixon has been running from his past and finding little that isn't morally suspect, except for the delicately naïve Morgan (Gene Tierney), daughter of a cab driver. “Innocent people can get into terrible jams,” he tells her, getting to the dark heart of a world where crooks and cops sup at the same table. Ben Hecht's stark script delineates Dixon as a man of dubious virtue in a gritty milieu where integrity reels like a punch-drunk heavy. “What did they hit you with?” asks Morgan when a bruised Dixon arrives at her door. “Various objects,” he replies with weary resignation.