Robert J. Maxwell Nancy Olson, pure of features and heart, spots two suspicious, gun-bearing men boarding the train she's on. She reports this to the conductor who pooh-poohs it but notifies the cops in Chicago anyway. This initiates a pretty good story that moves quickly and seldom stumbles.The two serious goons detrain in Chicago and Olson is met by the man in charge of security at Union Station, Bill Holden, and the local police, led by Barry Fitzgerald. The authorities quickly uncover a plot centering around the railroad station. The blind daughter of a tycoon has been kidnapped by perennial bad guy Lyle Bettger, whose very NAME sounds villainous. He treats his blond girl friend like dirt. Since neither Holden nor the cops know what the two kidnapping thugs look like, Nancy Olson is kept around in order to identify them in case they show up in the main concourse, where I once got a pretty good haircut from an amiable Italian barber and visited a curiously seedy nearby bar where the numbers runners ran openly in and out. I noticed a shelf jammed with oddments and tchotchkes behind the bar, including an anomalous textbook on physiology. Upon my asking the inn keeper if the object were for sale, he removed it from the shelf, slammed it on the bar, and replied, "You wanna buy it? Everything's for sale." But that's enough talking about Union Station and environs. Back to the movie. There isn't really much of it. A ransom of a zillion dollars is demanded of the tycoon, all to be packed in a suitcase and stashed in a locker at the station. Holden and Fitzgerald deploy Olsen to spot any of the kidnappers, as well as a horde of plainclothes cops, standing around, leaning against pillars, smoking cigarettes, pretending to read newspapers and eying every passerby with suspicion; in other words, acting exactly like plainclothes cops who are on the alert for skullduggery.It's really a B movie except for the stars. Rudolph Mate's direction is pedestrian. We never get any idea of the history or layout of Union Station. There is an underground chase, for instance, that is full of promise, if anyone remembers the chase through the sewers in "The Third Man" or "He Walked By Night." But we don't know where the tunnels are or where they lead to. Mate turns it into a rather ordinary scene of two people running through ancient, dripping caverns and shooting one another. The two men are Holden and the sneering, defiant Bettger. Guess which survives.Holden is tight-lipped and efficient throughout. He smiles once or twice at Nancy Olson, with whom he made several films, but there is nothing romantic going on. It's hard to see how he could resist her -- she's so damned NICE. She was a physician's daughter and represented her class with grace and sincerity. Fitzgerald is a little rougher in his attitudes than he was in a similar role in "The Naked City" but he gets to use that lovable smile, faith and begorrah, and cock his fedora in the movie's last shot. If that blind hostage had staggered and sscreamed one more time, I wouldn't have blamed Bettger if her body had washed up on the shore of Lake Michigan two days later.

chaos-rampant This is perfectly efficient but still not something I will remember a day from now. Why is this? It has solid noir elements: a blind girl kidnapped, a woman inspiring the detective story of looking for her, men at every corner (cops) looking, waiting. The blind girl in the nested story of the kidnapper, helpless and bounced along by greater forces. I would change not a thing of those. It is all about vision and the visual world love creates.But the film spends itself in just the tight bridging from one element to the next. It lacks the inner tension, that feeling in life of a more pervasive connectedness where we mysteriously encounter some missing part of ourselves that we look for all around us.Noir Meter: 1/4

Michael O'Keefe UNI0N STATION is classic film noir directed by Rudolph Matte. Gritty and suspenseful. Joyce Willecombe(Nancy Olson)is a private secretary, who boards a train back home to Chicago from visiting her boss Henry Murchison(Herbert Heyes). While on the train she observes a speeding car race to a small station and two suspicious looking men get out and board the train at opposite ends. On board these men act as strangers. Joyce happens to see a gun hidden in one man's coat and tries to alarm the conductor of the train. He can't help, but Lt. William Calhoun(William Holden)working at Union Station is called. It happens that the two men are part of a kidnapping scheme...the victim is the blind daughter of Joyce's employer. The young secretary feels guilty; but Calhoun and his boss, Inspector Donnelly(Barry Fitzgerald), insist that they will thwart the kidnapping and return Lorna Murchison(Allene Roberts)to her rich father. A lot of cat-and-mouse action and old fashion gunfire. Holden is cast perfectly and Miss Olson gets her share of screen time. Fitzgerald is fit as the calm and cool acting Irishman with the plan of action. The cast also includes: Lyle Bettger, Fred Graff, Don Dunning, Jan Sterling and Parley Baer.

GManfred Viewers at times have to approach some films with an atavistic demeanor, as though going to a museum. After all, times change, customs change, people change. Years ago many people smoked, men wore fedoras and Police methods were also different. This last seems to be Leonard Maltin's main objection to the film when he says 'dated police techniques'. This is 2008, and with the ACLU acting as spoilers, police no longer 'lean on' suspects.As previously stated, watch this picture with a sense of atavism and it is thoroughly enjoyable. After all, it was 1950 - many of us can remember those times, fondly. William Holden was almost a big star, Lyle Bettger was honing his talent as a heavy and Rudolph Mate was an accomplished Director. Tension is sustained throughout and the location photography is interesting. Do yourself a favor and see it next time it's on.