[3] In post-war China, court-martialed pilot Brad Dunham (George Raft) now flies smuggled goods into the country.

Meanwhile, an American newspaper reporter, Marc Andrews (Tom Tully), a friend of Brad's, shows up in Shanghai to investigate black-market crime.

In September 1946 George Raft announced he was forming his own production company, Star Films Inc, in association with Sam Bischoff.

[6] In February 1947 Bischoff announced the first film he would make with Raft under the four picture deal would be Intrigue based on an original story by George Slavin.

[13][N 1] The plot of Intrigue was originally meant to involve smuggling blood plasma, but this was changed to whisky and cigarettes at the request of Chinese-American organizations.

[18] In his review of Intrigue for The New York Times, Thomas M. Pryor considered the film a "conventional exercise in screen melodramatics " and George Raft's role as "... all so much wasted effort on his part for no one could possibly inject any semblance of verisimilitude into the hopeless botch of incident [sic] which Barry Trivers and George Slavin set to paper under the impression that they were writing a screen play.

"[20] Filmink wrote an appreciation of Helena Carter which referred to this movie saying her performance "helped establish what would be her stock in trade character – a good girl sexually attracted to the bad boy hero; moral, but not a stick in the mud; intelligent and spirited.

She's fully present and focused in her scenes with Raft – her eyes are alive, interested, alert; she's aware, not naive, nobody's fool.