A follow-up to The House on 92nd Street (1945), it tells the story of an undercover FBI agent, Gene Cordell (Mark Stevens), who infiltrates a deadly crime gang.

The film, shot in a semidocumentary style, takes place in the Skid Row section of fictional (actually Los Angeles) "Center City".

[2] A crime wave, including a holdup at a nightclub that ends in a murder and a bank robbery in which a guard is killed, has hit Center City.

Through the police department, Stiles has acquired a copy of Cordell's phony FBI record and is impressed enough to invite him to join his organization.

Cordell returns to gang headquarters and fires a shot from Stiles' Luger pistol in order to recover the bullet for testing.

Beneath its documentary exterior there lies a straight melodrama that harks back to the great gangster films of the early 1930s...Along a continuous line of fresh details, film includes a crackerjack fight sequence between Stevens and a professional pug, a glimpse into the FBI machinery, and a slambang finale in which the cops and the hoodlums shoot it out in an industrial plant.

In a secondary role, Lloyd Nolan, playing the same Inspector Briggs of the FBI of The House on 92nd Street, delivers with his usual competence.

"[4] More recently, critic Dennis Schwartz wrote, "William Keighley (Bullets or Ballots/G Men) ably directs in a no-nonsense manner this semi-documentary styled crime drama, while Harry Kleiner provides the taut script; it follows in the authentically atmospheric territory carved out by The House on 92nd Street (1945).