Petty thief Nick Robey botches a robbery, shooting and killing a policeman, and leaving his partner Al severely wounded.

Dalton Trumbo had signed to write the screen adaptation of Sam Ross's novel just weeks from starting the jail term resulting from his own testimony to HUAC, in 1947.

In a 1997 letter to the Writers Guild of America West, which was determining the restoration of credits to blacklisted members, Trumbo's widow Cleo stated that their friend and fellow writer Hugo Butler had been asked by Trumbo to ensure that the script not be altered while he was incarcerated, and Butler restored much of the original material, adding some of his own.

[9] Less than a month after Garfield's death in May 1952, United Artists announced it would rerelease the title, among three others, in summer of that year.

When the film was released, New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther praised Garfield's work, writing:John Garfield's stark performance of the fugitive who desperately contrives to save himself briefly from capture is full of startling glints from start to end.

He makes a most odd and troubled creature, unused to the normal flow of life, unable to perceive the moral standards of decent people or the tentative advance of a good girl's love.

And in Mr. Garfield's performance, vis-a-vis the rest of the cast, is conveyed a small measure of the irony and the pity that was in the book.

[6]Variety called the film "a taut gangster pic," adding, "Good production values keep a routine yarn fresh and appealing.

Film is scripted, played and directed all the way with little waste motion, so that the suspense is steady and interest constantly sustained."

commended both Garfield's and Winters's performances, as well as an "unusually good" supporting cast, and, among other personnel, singled out composer Franz Waxman ("Pull of pic is further hyped by a strong music score...") and director of photography James Wong Howe, for "some markedly effective camera shots...."[5]