Freelance trucker driver Steve Brodie accepts an evening job, despite also celebrating a 4-month engagement with his girl Audrey Long, because it pays so well and they can use the money. What Brodie doesn't realize until it's too late is that the job is for moving a load of stolen furs and is paid for by an old friend, now crook, Raymond Burr. Before he can refuse, a police officer is shot, and in the chaos Brodie drives off in a panic, while Burr's kid brother is arrested. Brodie doesn't get far however and Burr has him roughed up, wanting him to be the fall guy, clearing his kid brother. But when Brodie's name and photo ends up in the newspapers, he decides to run away with Long. They head out west to Long's aunt. Burr hires shady private dick Douglas Fowley to track down Brodie. Brodie eventually tries to turn himself in and give his side of the story, but police inspector Jason Robards Sr. lets him go, using him as bait to get to the rest of the gang. And sure enough, Fowley has no problem finding Brodie...A tense noir/thriller that wastes little time from start to finish. It was the last noir of director Anthony Mann ('T-Men', 'Raw Deal') before starting a partnership with DoP John Alton. However, the cinematographer on this movie, George E. Diskant ('The Narrow Margin', 'On Dangerous Ground') is no slouch either. The movie is beautiful to watch with some great noir photography.Brodie ('Out of The Past', 'Armored Car Robbery') is quite good as an innocent man on the run, but Long ('Born To Kill') is a bit too wholesome here for my taste. Burr ('Raw Deal', 'Pitfall') was born to play noir heavies, he is as menacing here as ever. Fowley ('Behind Locked Doors', 'Edge Of Doom') is his usual slimy self, I feel even as a character actor he never really escaped the B's, which is a shame, he had the necessary talent in my opinion.There is very little noir ambiguity in this movie, the good guys are great and friendly and the bad guys are mean and conniving. It's a minor complaint however, for an otherwise highly entertaining movie that keeps the suspense level pretty high throughout, with a great build-up to an exciting climax inside a 4-story stairwell. Highly recommended! 8/10

Raymond Burr shines in Desperate an early film in his career. You could tell this man was going to be films for the long haul. Although it would have been a shame if he only was cast as thuggish gangsters for the rest of his life.But in that part he steals the film from leads Steve Brodie and Audrey Long. Brodie is a friend of Burr's since childhood and Brodie's recently returned from the war, married his sweetheart Long, and is now settling into a career as a truck-driver. Burr conceives a brilliant scheme in which he hires Brodie for his truck as part of a heist only he doesn't tell Brodie about it. When the heist is a bust and Burr's younger brother is captured and a cop killed in foiling the robbery, Burr's conceives a nasty hatred for Brodie and Brodie and Long have to flee. Suspicion is also on Brodie so the police are after him as well.It's really quite preposterous when you think about it. Burr takes the eager kid brother along on the job because the brother wants to emulate his sibling. Then when he's caught it isn't his fault, it's the fault of the guy who was tricked into it and who foiled Burr's plans. But I saw a situation like that in my own life.I knew this man who was in fact quite a lowlife himself. But he did rise to a position of some authority and insisted on bringing his equally raised lowlife son into his business. The kid was also a prize specimen with a serious drug problem and was busy in his supervisory position extorting the other employees for monies to feed his habit. The father was completely blind to his kid's problem, it was everyone else who was conspiring against his precious son. In the end the kid both lost the job and ended dying of cocaine contributed heart problems. To this day the father won't recognize his own culpability. In a nutshell that's Raymond Burr's character here.Steve Brodie had a good career as a secondary lead, this was one of his few starring roles. He was a good actor, but his height prevented him from gaining stardom and he didn't have the charisma of a James Cagney who could have really done something with this character. So could Alan Ladd over at Paramount. Audrey Long is probably best remembered for playing opposite John Wayne in Tall In The Saddle where she is in competition with Ella Raines for the Duke. Brodie and Long are fine, but this is really Raymond Burr's film.

Not a bad movie. It has its moments. One occurs while villainous Raymond Burr is holding hero Steve Brodie at gunpoint with the intention of shooting him at the exact moment Burr's brother is scheduled to die in the electric chair. Burr blames Brodie for the capture of Burr's brother and is going to take revenge. Burr sets the alarm clock at twelve minutes to midnight and the seconds tick by without the hands of the clock seeming to move. Sweat trickles down everyone's face and the silence hangs like a shroud over the tableau.Another good scene is the climactic shoot out in which Brodie pursues Burr slowly and carefully up half a dozen creaking flights of stairs in a rooming house. Burr waits, gun in hand, until Brodie appears on the landing below, takes aim, shoots -- and misses. Four times. Brodie fires only once, on the top floor. There is one of those open spaces between the many flights of stairs. Does anyone need to explain what happens to Burr's body when the bullet finds its mark? Neat touch: As the slow-motion chase moves roofward, some apartment doors open, the occupants peer out, curious about the gunplay, then abruptly close the doors and disappear.The script is pedestrian. Brodie, an ex-GI with a pregnant wife, is tricked into taking part in a robbery engineered by Burr's gang but he manages to signal the police and the robbery is aborted. Thereafter Burr and his gang track down Brodie, threaten to mutilate his wife, Audrey Long, and otherwise cause Brodie some considerable measure of distress.Brodie and wife escape to the farm of his in-laws and we get the contrast between the happy, ritualized life of rural peasants (immigrant Czechs this time) and the corrupt, cynical, and brutal life of the city. Those provincials certainly know how to eat and dance. The guys from the city are likely to offer you only "some milk, a loaf of bread, and some tired meat." Brodie isn't a terrible actor but his face is bland, the way a container of plain yogurt is bland. Burr is the most interesting performer. He has large, dark eyes and an insinuating baritone voice. And he's plump. A good heavy. Audrey Long -- well, what can you say? She's mighty pretty in a conventional way, with long blond hair and attractive features, and she doesn't turn in a poor performance.On the whole, though, there's not that much to recommend this movie. It's a routine thriller that was made on a modest budget with second-tier actors, an offhanded script, and little sense of location. It's not bad. It's just not much more than routine.

This 40s noir B-movie has quite a solid reputation, but its plot is strictly second-rate. Steve Brodie plays an average joe, a truck driver not long out of the army and recently married to a lush wife who bakes cakes to celebrate the fact that she is pregnant. Sadly, hubby never gets to taste her culinary skills because he accepts a last minute lucrative driving job that turns out to be crooked. Raymond Burr's gang of crooks haven't got their own vehicle so, bizarrely, they decide to hire one to carry out a warehouse theft and, one dead cop later, Brodie finds himself on the run as a cop-killer.Mann's direction is better than the plot. He wasn't scared to try something different every now and then. At one point we're even given a blurry POV close-up of Burr's retreating fist after it has connected with Brodie's face. Burr plays the heavy here, as he usually did in his early career. He was a big man even before he put a few pounds on, but looks swarthy here as well, almost Mediterranean. He's certainly the most interesting character in the film, a gangster out to save his brother from the electric chair and endeavouring to have our relatively bland hero take his place.The main weakness in the storyline is the hero's poor decision-making. He practically panics each time danger is at hand, and yet delays contacting the police for an inordinate length of time so that the villains can more or less pursue him at their leisure.This is undoubtedly better than its modest production values would suggest, but it isn't a classic by any measure.