Made in a film noir style, the crime drama is based on the pilot episode of the 1961 television series The Asphalt Jungle and stars an ensemble cast including Jack Warden, Vera Miles, Robert Douglas, and Arch Johnson.
His legal secretary, Angela Walsh, is also his mistress, and he provides her with a house of her own, where Sam Henry – a corrupt New York City administrator who acts as a "bag man" for the syndicate – makes a weekly visit to pick up money from Bardeman.
Gower is an idealistic and honest cop and outspoken critic of the corruption he finds all around him in the city government and police force.
He has faced repeated reprimands and disciplinary action, including a demotion from deputy inspector to captain, at the hands of the corrupt Police Commissioner James Deane, who punishes him when he interferes in syndicate activities.
When Mayor Harold Emshaw, facing pressure from the press to clean up the city government and police department, removes Deane from his position, he appoints Gower as acting commissioner, promoting him over the head of his superior, Chief Inspector Gus Honochek.
Gower sets about creating a hand-picked team of honest detectives to work directly under him to investigate organized crime activities, including Sergeant Frank Orte and the resentful Honochek.
She throws the locker key at him to force him to retrieve it rather than chase her, then runs off and gets into a taxicab, but two of Gower's detectives stop the cab almost immediately and arrest her.
Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Television in a film noir style, it was a gritty, hard-boiled police drama starring Jack Warden, Arch Johnson, and William Smith (billed as "Bill Smith") as detectives in the police force of an unnamed city in the Midwestern United States specializing in investigating the activities of organized crime.
[5] Anticipating the show's cancellation and deciding to create a theatrical film for distribution in Europe, MGM Television shot an additional 30 minutes of footage using the same cast and crew as "The Lady and the Lawyer."
[1] Intended from the outset for theatrical release in Europe rather than the United States, The Lawbreakers is considerably more violent and risqué than domestic American films of the era and far more so than any episode of The Asphalt Jungle television series.
Apparently, its only showing in the United States was a single broadcast on cable television on Turner Classic Movies over 40 years after its European release.
In recent years, The Lawbreakers has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and has received favorable reviews from online film bloggers, who have described it as tightly edited and directed, providing an informative and thorough depiction of the operations of both organized crime and the police, and featuring a surprisingly talented cast of character actors, considering its origin as a television series episode.
Vera Miles' performance as a film noir femme fatale and Joseph M. Newman's direction have been singled out for praise.