Sur la trace du crime

"Rogue Cop" is a 1954 film starring Robert Taylor, George Raft, Janet Leigh, Anne Francis, and Steve Forrest.

People seem surprised Taylor pulls off the tough guy act - I've seen him do it before, and he was good at it.

This is a no-nonsense film about a cop on the take (Taylor) whose honest cop brother (Forrest) can identify someone involved in a murder. The guy who pays off Taylor (Raft) wants him to convince his brother to suddenly not identify him. His brother won't go along with it, making for problems.

I had actually just seen a 1933 Taylor film and what struck me is how many octaves his voice had gone down! Smoking and age will do that.

There isn't anything special about this film. Janet Leigh is beautiful as Forrest's girlfriend with a past, and Anne Francis is Raft's decades-younger alcoholic girlfriend. Both women are fresh- faced and lovely.

No pulling of punches in this movie by Taylor. My mother worshiped the ground he walked on, so I well remember his series, The Detectives. He could be rough and tough with the best of them.

With some of the roles he played as he got older, it's hard to believe that at one time MGM was worried about a powder puff image that Robert Taylor had in his youth.

Seeing Taylor as Chris Kelvaney in Rogue Cop is like seeing a whole different player than Armand in Camille. But it's the same guy and a film like Rogue Cop brings out the maturity and depth Taylor had as an artist as well as a person.

Taylor is a long time big city cop on the take to gangland boss George Raft. He's risen pretty high in the department and could go farther. He's a pretty cynical dude, in his chosen field he's seen a lot of the worst that people can be.

But he's got a kid brother played by Steve Forrest who's a straight arrow. He doesn't know about his brother and he gets himself killed because he crosses Raft in the performance of his duty.

Forrest's death gives Taylor a mission, he'll take Raft down no matter what it costs.

There are two prominent female roles, Janet Leigh as Forrest's girl friend who later develops an interest in Taylor and Anne Francis as Raft's moll who turns against him. Both women hold their own in what is a male dominated film. Francis borrows quite a bit from Gloria Grahame and her performance in The Big Heat. Also both Rogue Cop and The Big Heat have blackmail of a syndicate boss as the underpinning of the story.

Raft of course is in his element as a gangland boss. In the rest of the cast there's a very nice performance by Robert Ellenstein as Taylor's honest partner. The final shootout with Raft and company with the two of them is one of the best and most realistic ever staged in a film.

For Robert Taylor fans, Rogue Cop is an absolute must and people who don't think much of Taylor as player will be jolted at how well he does in this film.

A hard-edged, gritty, violent little crime drama from, of all studios, MGM! Probably the closest that studio ever came to a noir thriller, only the overall gloss gives it away as an MGM film (guess they just couldn't help themselves); otherwise it could well have come from Warners or RKO. Robert Taylor is in top form as a hardened detective who has been immersed for so long in the seedy, seamy world of big-city crime that he finally succumbs to its corruption and is even tempted to sell out his younger brother, who is also a policeman. George Raft as the slimy crime boss, Janet Leigh as his brother's pretty, sweet (but hardly naive) fiancé, Robert Ellenstein (in a standout performance) as his partner and friend who doesn't want to see Taylor become the kind of lowlife he's always hated, all combine with a Chandler-esqe script by Sydney Boehm, tough, no-nonsense direction from Roy Rowland (a reliable but somewhat stolid director of mainly westerns and musicals) and a violent, action-filled climax to make this a must-see for noir fans. Highly recommended.

By 1954, the noir cycle had already sounded most of its dissonant themes. Audiences had seen the crooked cop with the straight-arrow younger brother (The Man Who Cheated Himself); the shantoozie with a past (Gilda, Dead Reckoning, The Last Crooked Mile); the slick mobster beyond the reach of the law with his alcoholic, trophy mistress (Key Largo, Railroaded,The Big Heat); the street-savvy old jane who passes on scuttlebutt for a price (Pickup on South Street). But, as Roy Rowland's Rogue Cop demonstrates, there were still changes to be rung on those themes, jazzed up with fresh casting and pithy writing.

Here, the cop gone sour isn't a homicidal brute like Edmond O'Brien in the same year's Shield For Murder (both movies were adapted from books by William McGivern, as was Fritz Lang's The Big Heat). He's dapper, laid-back Robert Taylor, known by his `brothers' on the force to be on the take but given a wide berth despite it (it's the thin blue line's equivalent of omertà).

When his younger brother Steve Forrest, also a policeman, identifies a connected hit-man, Taylor receives a summons from his paymaster, crime boss George Raft. Either Forrest recants his testimony, in return for a $15-grand payoff, or he'll be killed (the accused knows too much and might sing if convicted). Upon delivering the ultimatum, Taylor gets rebuffed by Forrest; he then tries to blackmail his brother's fiancée Janet Leigh, a nightclub singer, into trying to change his mind. Taylor doesn't really want Forrest to go bad, he just doesn't want him dead.

But Raft plays tougher than Taylor imagines. Lulling Taylor into thinking he still has time, Raft has Forrest shot in the back. And so the worm turns: Using both Leigh and Raft's discarded moll Anne Francis as his allies, Taylor swears vengeance....

Crisply photographed by John Seitz, Rogue Cop burrows snugly into its rotten urban core – a city of dreadful night. With its large and aptly chosen cast, it nonetheless rests squarely on the shoulders of its central character, Taylor, who comes through with the performance of his career. At age 42, he passes muster as a burnt-out cop who's sold out for easy money – in this urban jungle, corruption is just another perk passed up only by fools -- but still has the wits and the will to spring a few surprises when cornered.

There's plenty of brutal, even sadistic, action, but Rogue Cop is less an action picture than a character study that Taylor, somewhat surprisingly, manages to pull off. With its siblings The Big Heat and Shield For Murder, Rogue Cop makes up a grim tryptich of big-town America in the mid-20th century.

Rogue Cop is directed by Roy Rowland and adapted to screenplay by Sydney Boehm from the novel written by William P. McGivern. It stars Robert Taylor, Janet Leigh, George Raft, Steve Forrest and Anne Francis. Music is by Jeff Alexander and cinematography by John F. Seitz.

Christopher Kelvaney (Taylor) is a cop on the take from the mob that's fronted by Dan Beaumont (Raft). When his brother and fellow cop, Eddie (Forrest), is requested to withdraw testimony about a crook covered by Beaumont, Chris is compromised and danger lurks for all involved.

A face wrinkled like Venetian blinds.

Out of MGM, Rogue Cop is a better than average venture into film noir territories. Characters are standard fare for such plottings, but the moral quagmire at Kelvaney's core lifts things considerably. Helps also that Kelvaney is a cop with a quip, the script affording the character some hard boiled edges. With Seitz on photography duties, Rowland is able to fill out the pic with usual noir trappings, where shadows and dim lights exude a doom ambiance.

Stoolies Incorporated.

Scenes are staged in noir funky locations such as a penny arcade (scene of the vicious crime that kicks everything off), a race track and of course shimmering streets, the latter of which plays host to the gun laden finale. Colourful characters such as Francis' (excellent) lush moll and Olive Carey's wise old news stand operator (info for sale) add some side-bar female essence to the moody tale. The ending could have been bolder as per outcome, but it sits OK, and since the story has its share of emotional wallops for some of the players, it ultimately ends up as a comfortable recommendation to noir fans. 7/10