st-shot Edmond O'Brien makes Popeye Doyle look like a crossing guard as a corrupt cop in Shield to Murder. High on The American Dream he turns other lives into nightmares or worse in this compact cynical story of police corruption.Trigger happy detective Barney Nolan waylays a gambler with a wad and wastes him using a silencer. Not the first time he's shot someone but the thin blue line is not about to be crossed. Nolan has big plans for the cash with his hat check girlfriend that he is violently jealous over along with a house he just bought in the burbs. The pressure begins to build when the mob comes calling for their money and a witness to the initial robbery mysteriously dies but Nolan remains resolute in his dream and expires from it on his front lawn under a hail of bullets.O'Brien plays Nolan with paranoid intensity, a victim as well as victimizer in the corrupt world he has made his living. The pressure on his face never subsides (unless facing off with his girlfriend) as he mightily attempts to make a go at a tenuous caper. Special mention should also go to Carolyn Jones doing a loopy bar fly kibitzing with Nolan on his demented level. In a couple of years she would get an Academy Award nomination for a variation of it in The Bachelor Party.Visually there are actual gaffes with a boom mike shadow but two particularly well edited scenes resonate; a shootout in a locker room and pool area along with a brutal beat down in a restaurant reaffirming Nolan's vicious nature. With nothing redemptive outside of his warped love for his girl O'Brien's Nolan remains unsympathetic from end to end making Shield to Murder an ugly but decent watch.

Joe Stemme A sterling example of Rogue Cop noir. It's dirty, cheap and nasty - just how I like my noirs! Edmond O'Brien stars and co-directs (with Producer Howard W. Kotch). It has a grimy atmosphere right from the get go. The acting is solid all around, if not exactly nuanced.That lack of subtlety hurts only in the sense that you find it hard to believe that O'Brien's Barney would have the confidence of his fellow law enforcement personnel including his buddy (John Agar; solid), not to mention romancing a dishy dame (Marla English - 20 years his junior at the time). The pacing of the film also lags a bit behind the beats of the storyline. It picks up at the very end, but you do feel that the Direction holds the film back from being truly exceptional. And, English is very much relegated to a passive stereotypical "girl" here (Carolyn Jones' excellent one scene performance has more going on in five minutes than English gets as the female lead).It's still a very, very good noir with more than enough to recommend, even if it just misses being a top rank genre entry.

evanston_dad Every character in "Shield for Murder," even minor ones, seems worn down by life. The whole film has a bleak, hopeless tone, personified by the principal character, played by Edmond O'Brien, a crooked cop who murders someone for money and then spends the rest of the film dodging both the crime boss who the money was meant for and the police who want to see justice done. The hugely ironic finale finds O'Brien being gunned down on the front lawn of his suburban dream home, which he was going to use the money to buy. The 1950s suburban American dream is not to be had for this prototypical noir protagonist (or should we say antagonist).O'Brien appeared frequently in films like this, but rarely did he play such an unapologetic bad guy. Usually his characters, if not necessarily nice guys, at least had one foot on the side of what's right and decent. This character is bad through and through, which is a bit of a misstep for the movie, since we're not at all conflicted about seeing him brought down. In so many noirs, the suspense comes from seeing essentially good men wrongfully accused, or watching them land in bad situations because of tricks of fate or wrong place wrong time dumb luck. But in this one, we just want to see O'Brien get caught, and since we're pretty sure he will be given the conventions of the time and genre, there's not much suspense in seeing it all play out.The film's biggest asset is probably the brief appearance of Carolyn Jones decked out as a bleach blonde. For the time she's on camera, her exotic face was the only thing I could look at.Grade: B+

MartinHafer This film begins with perhaps the worst instance where a boom microphone is obviously in the shot. As Edmond O'Brien is walking from left to right across the screen, you can very, very clearly see the microphone's shadow. It's so clear and obvious you wonder how the film ever got released this way. It's funny but also rather sloppy. The same can be said for showing a revolver with a silencer--it quiets the shot SOME but isn't as silent as they usually show in films. These mistakes are probably there because this is a low-budget film and didn't have the care needed for a more prestigious project. It could also be that co-director and star Edmond O'Brien simply was out of his element as a director. Despite these limitations, the film IS worth seeing and I enjoyed it very much. That's because the script was taut and well-written. Additionally, the acting was fine---quite realistic and gritty.The film begins with a police detective (O'Brien) killing a bag man for the mob. In other words, this man was carrying a huge amount of illegal gambling money. However, this killing was NOT a mistake---O'Brien had decided to cash in on some seemingly easy money--killing the guy and claiming it was accidental. While this seems a bit suspicious, the story seemed plausible enough and it appeared as if he'll get away with murder and $25,000. However, there turned out to be a witness and soon O'Brien has killed again to hide his crime. And, like eating potato chips, O'Brien can't just stop there, as his plan is unraveling and the only way to keep it together is to kill again and possibly again.In addition to O'Brien, John Agar plays a younger cop who is O'Brien's friend. He is torn, as he strongly believes in O'Brien--but over time, it becomes more and more clear that O'Brien has gone bad. This is an interesting character and gave some depth to the film--and proves that despite conventional wisdom, Agar was a pretty good actor--he just chose to appear in a lot of rotten films in the 1950s and 60s (after his divorce from Shirley Temple).Overall, the film gets very high marks for its realism. In particular, it's very, very brutal for a Film Noir picture--one scene in particular made me cringe. It also gets high marks for the plot as well as O'Brien's excellent acting. It's actually surprising today that Edmond O'Brien is pretty much forgotten, as this Oscar-winning actor and supporting actor was great in tough-guy roles as he was far from the usual Hollywood "pretty boy"--an ugly and brick-like guy who could really act.So, despite a few technical problems, this is a better than average cop film that holds up very well today. For fans of Noir, like myself, it's a must-see--as is any O'Brien Noir film!