James Gleason and Robert Armstrong are a couple of boomers -- itinerant railroad men who hop from one line to another. They wind up operating out of a switching yard in the middle of nowhere where Zasu Pitts and Patricia Caron run the commissary and pay roll and everything that doesn't require too much muscle, and they all wind up intending to settle down. When one of the workers wins big in a crap game, gets his money stolen, and beaten unconscious, fingers point at Armstrong.
Director Tay Garnett and D. P. Arthur Miller try their hardest, but they shoot a lot of this outdoors and the sound rigs aren't up to it. Neither is the slow-and-dumb characterization of Armstrong very interesting. On the plus side, there are a couple of tracking shots early on, plenty of contemporary railroad slang in the dialogue, and the final sequence, which is shot half wild, permits some movement with undercranking that makes it genuinely interesting. On the whole, though, it has aged very poorly.
