Loved it! But wished for a few things...

I thought this little film was a gem! Especially since I've just seen it, mid-Summer in the run-up to a Presidential election. It made the film, and all the nuisances from the campaign trail all the more enjoyable.

So, in the Code-era edict of "crime doesn't pay" wouldn't you have thought that the poor wife, played by the lovely Muriel Angelus, would have somehow come out alright? I mean, aside from just the little nest egg that McGinty left her? And McGinty didn't do so bad, he's certainly no worse off than when he first met the boss. It didn't seem like he had to face the music, really. At least not in the context of this film's time and era.

I thought that the wife's part was a little one-dimensional and that her getting cast aside by the end was handled clumsily.

This is the first film in which I've seen Brian Donlevy so animated and he really came across as a live wire. I loved him in Impact and Hangmen Also Die, but in both of those he was so serious the whole time.