Fast moving, action-packed and violent, this account of the criminal career of Jack "Legs" Diamond (Ray Danton) is presented with the same energy and drive that the notorious gangster showed when he was making his way to the very top of the New York underground. His determination, ruthlessness and scheming enabled him to achieve his ambition but he was also a man with a fatal flaw which ultimately contributed to his downfall.Shortly after Jack and his sickly brother Eddie (Warren Oates) arrive in New York City, Jack meets dance instructor Alice Schiffer (Karen Steele) and is frustrated in his attempt to date her because she's due to take part in a dance competition. After pulling a couple of dirty tricks to incapacitate her dance partner and eliminate the couple who were expected to win, Jack and Alice win the competition and celebrate by going to a movie. During the performance, Jack exits the building via a skylight in the bathroom and steals a valuable necklace from the jewellery store next door before casually returning to his seat. After he slips the necklace into Alice's purse, the couple leave the building and avoid any problems with the police officers who are checking patrons outside because Alice is able to provide Jack with an alibi. Later that night, Jack dumps Alice because, in his eyes, she'd served her purpose.Jack is subsequently found guilty of the theft and serves time in prison before contacting Alice to assist him in getting paroled. She obliges, but after working as her dance partner for the duration of his parole, Jack dumps her again and then focuses on stealing from people who aren't able to go to the police for help. To this end, he tries unsuccessfully to get hired as a bodyguard by underground kingpin Arnold Rothstein (Robert Lowery) and instead, is taken on by another gangster called Little Augie (Sid Melton). Shorty after, he and Augie are attacked by a couple of gunmen and although Jack miraculously survives (despite sustaining three bullet wounds), his boss is killed. When Jack recovers, he takes his revenge on the gunmen in an act that impresses Rothstein sufficiently for him to hire Jack as his bodyguard.Jack uses his new job and an affair he has with Rothstein's girlfriend to learn everything he can about his boss' business and after Rothstein is killed in mysterious circumstances, establishes a protection racket to collect 25 % of the earnings made by the city's remaining crime bosses. Many complications follow as Jack gets shot again, marries Alice and sends Eddie away to a hospital in Denver to get treatment for his tuberculosis before having to deal with a whole series of further challenges, including the end of prohibition.Jack, as depicted in this movie, is charming, confident and an incredible opportunist who's clever at using various schemes to achieve his goals. He's absolutely ruthless and brutal in pursuing his aims and is particularly callous in his treatment of his brother and the three women with whom he has affairs. After repeatedly recovering from being shot, he actually starts to believe that he can't be killed by a gun and his wife Alice sums up her feelings about him when she says that "he never loved anybody". Ray Danton is perfect for his role and is, in fact, so good that it's hard to imagine that anyone else could have equalled his performance."The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond" has a humorous undercurrent that works surprisingly well and also some top class camera-work. A low-angle shot of Jack seen through a skylight and an overhead shot of him standing outside a pawnbroker's shop are just a couple of examples of how well some of the scenes are composed. Overall, the movie is exciting and solidly entertaining and compares favourably in quality with the other gangster films (e.g. "Machine-Gun Kelly" and "Baby Face Nelson") which were so popular during the 1957 - 1960 period.

Budd Boetticher's "The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond" may be studio bound and a little artificial at times but it moves at a cracking pace and is never less than hugely entertaining as well as being somewhat neglected. That good and underrated actor Ray Danton is Jack 'Legs' Diamond and he dominates a fine cast that includes Simon Oakland, Elaine Stewart and in small parts Warren Oates and a young Dyan Cannon,(called Diane here). Diamond's career in crime has been largely overlooked by the movies and I can't gauge just how accurately this film portrays him. If it is factually correct then Mr Diamond was one mean so-and-so!

Picture starts out with a promising mission: It was to show the rise and fall of Legs Diamond. At once, the guy is shown to be a selfish cad. Ray Danton looks almost glassy-eyed here in his portrayal of the noted gangster.Jesse White, as Leo, is totally miscast. White sounds like he is almost ready to do another Maytag commercial. He is totally unconvincing as a gangster.The picture quickly dissolves into a shoot them up action film. The characters are not given any chance to develop, especially the part of Arnold Rothstein.Karen Steele does well in the part of the abused wife. She really drinks her way down a downward path.Rather weak writing does this 1960 film in. Ray Danton, 5 years before, you made your film debut as Susan Hayward's ill-fated attorney-boyfriend in the classic "I'll Cry Tomorrow." You were voted most promising actor. Then, you began to make films of lower quality and you were soon washed up as an actor. As far as this film, while we realize that Legs is portrayed as someone not capable of loving anyone, it is never fully explained why he turned on his sickly brother.

Boetticher viewed his heroes, trapped in the past and doomed to wander, with no more sentimentality than his outlaws, who try, often hopelessly, to forget their criminal ways and settle down… His darkest film of all, however, was "The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond," in which the sun-baked desert is replaced by a dark, claustrophobic urban nightmare… Boetticher's psychopathic hood, played with relentless energy by Ray Danton, is a totally amoral figure whose lust for power leads him to destroy even his brother in order to protect himself… Fast, cruel and violent, the film is one of the cinema's bleakest visions of unrestrained ambition….