Dean Jagger is a customs agent with a trench coat. He's told a good friend has been killed tracking down a jewelry theft ring in Marseilles, and he's been assigned to fly to Europe so he can be seated on a flight next to the suspected head of the operation. Through mischance, he's seated next to Lottie Elwen, who's coming to America to marry a guy whose apartment has been invaded and he's been killed. She's also carrying the latest batch of stolen ice.
It's what I call a paycheck movie, made of bits and pieces of other movies, filled with talent in front of and behind the camera who haven't made it and who may never do so. Jagger, who had been struggling in the Bs for 20 years, goes undercover as a dumb PI who gets his head beat in for information; his next movie would win him the Oscar for Best Supporting Oscar, but here he's doing his best with a ridiculous script. Director Joseph Lerner would struggle for ten years, making a few documentaries and independent Bs like this and disappear from the movies. Second-billed John Carradine .... well, here was an actor whom everyone respected and who never really clicked. Cinematographer Gerald Hirschfeld, DP on his second movie, shot the streets of New York like he hated them, and did well enough eventually. His black-and-white camerawork topped out with FAIL-SAFE and YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN. Composer Gail Kubik would turn his score from this movie into a Pulitzer-Prize winning symphony, but here it just sounds.... cheap.
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And that's this whole movie: cheap,with everyone trying to do a decent job and earn their paychecks and do well enough that some one would notice and say "Well, this guy has potential. Let's give him a shot. Most of the people here never really got that shot, or had long minor careers. Well, sometimes that's what people want.
