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Ignored at the time of it's release and still criminally underrated, On Dangerous Ground is a masterpiece from director Nicholas Ray, and maybe his best film {yes, better than Rebel Without A Cause}, a powerful yet poignant study of loneliness, urban alienation and finally redemption. It's both tough and tender, both thrilling and thoughtful, both sad and uplifting. In fact, the film itself is comprised of two halves, and both are simply brilliantly handled.

The first half is classic hard boiled film noir. Set almost entirely at night, Robert Ryan's policeman patrols the streets, getting so sickened by the filth he deals with that he has become dehumanised. As he deals with the gangsters ,the tramps and the thieves, the film has an almost documentary style, but it's also an extremely powerful study of a man caught in limbo, perhaps not that many stages away from Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle.

By contrast, the second half takes place mainly in daylight and forgoes the forbidding city scapes for snowy countryside. Ray gives us two terrific outdoor chase sequences, but just as striking are the beautifully written and played scenes between Ryan and the blind Ida Lupino, this tentative almost-romance between two lonely souls being so incredibly poignant. The last reel is somewhat rushed, due partially to pre-release cutting, and maybe the happy ending is un realistic. However, the final embrace has a tremendous sense of release.

Ryan superbly portrays his character's sickness and gradual melting while the gorgeous Ida Lupino has never looked more vulnerable. Bernard Herrmann's score is one of his best ever, ranging from thrilling hunt music for the chase scenes to music of almost unbearable beauty for Lupino. The score alone is a work of art ,but so is this wonderfully compact {at around 80 mins!}and excellent film.

Nicolas Ray who directed a string of good films, most notably In a Lonely Place, Flying Leatjernecks and They live by Night and would become best known for Rebel Without a Cause directed this fine film-noir flick from 1952. He had taken the idea for the story based on the Gerald Butler novel Mad With Much Heart. Ray teamed with Albert Bezzerides for the screenplay who had written They Drive by Night, Desert Fury and Thieves Highway for the screen and would become best known in film for Kiss Me Deadly. He would become better known in television as the creator of the long running western series The Big Valley. Excellent photography in this film from cinematographer George E. Diskant. Robert Ryan is one of Hollywood's most underrated actors and in the staring role of a burnt out city cop on the road to redemption and awakening, turns in yet another great performance. Ida Lupino is another of my favorites and this time around plays a blind woman living alone in rural upstate Mew York. This is a film in two acts that are almost like tow separate films. Part one we find the Ryan character as a violent tough and over the edge cop who once was a popular high school football star and has become burned out in his job and dissatisfied with his lonely small apartment so he hates his job and his life away from work. The first half of the film is mostly night scenes. He is sent by his superiors to cool off in the frozen north and try to help solve a local murder. In the Ward Bond character as the Father of a murdered woman he meets someone even more angry and violent than he is. Bond delivers a strong supporting role performance. Rounding out the fine cast are Ed Begley, Charles Kemper and Anthony Ross. Famed, prolific composer Bernard Hermann provide the musical score. The story might be a little simplistic at times and predictable but it is still a strong film and I would give it an 8.5 out of 10.

'On Dangerous Ground' is a very original and striking movie, one of the most interesting to come out of 1950s Hollywood. The movie is in two halves. The first is urban and sees Robert Ryan play Jim Wilson a brutal but seemingly moral cop who appears to be on the brink of a complete breakdown. His character could well be the toughest cop ever seen on screen until the early 1970s heyday of Dirty Harry and Popeye Doyle,etc. The second half is rural, with Wilson being sent out of the city to investigate the murder of a young girl (shades almost of Stellan Skarsgard in 1997's 'Insomnia'). There he encounters a local blind woman (Ida Lupino), the sister of his number one suspect. The first half is as I said, extremely tough, the second half is ALMOST a mystery (yet it's obvious who the murderer is), and ALMOST a romance (but handled in a very subtle and "unHollywood" way). It's an odd combination but really works because the script lacks cliches, Nicholas "Rebel Without A Cause" Ray's direction is very fresh and inventive, and the acting is first rate. Lupino makes the most of her supporting role, as does Ward Bond ('The Searchers') as the father of the murdered girl, and Sumner Williams as Lupino's disturbed younger brother, but Robert Ryan steals the movie. I'm beginning to regard Ryan as one of the most underrated screen actors of all time. Just watch him in this, the boxing classic 'The Set-Up', 'Crossfire', 'Bad Day At Black Rock', and of course, 'The Wild Bunch' and see what I mean. 'On Dangerous Ground' deserves a much larger audience. Highly recommended.

Lovely is not a word I would normally use when describing a film noir, yet here I am, labeling On Dangerous Ground as a lovely piece of work. It is perhaps Nicholas Ray's most upbeat movie, beginning as a hard- hitting cop story and ending on a heartwarming note, with renewal and hopefulness at its beck and call. It is the only tender film noir I've seen. Genre turnarounds can be hurtful to the tone of a film, as no one wants to go to the theaters for a Will Ferrell vehicle only to find it sinking into tragedy rather than an uproariously funny closer. But by tying the pessimistic atmosphere of the first act into the neuroses of the title character, the shift in On Dangerous Ground is largely flattering, a difficult feat that Ray pulls off with unwavering certainty. He believes in the story, and, as a result, so do we.

Robert Ryan portrays Jim Wilson, a worn-out detective who is growing increasingly intolerant towards the disreputable scum he deals with on a regular basis. In past film noirs, cops as violent as Wilson would eventually go as far as murdering someone, spending the rest of the movie trying to make their wrongs into rights. But in On Dangerous Ground, it immediately becomes evident that Wilson is capable of saintly good nature but has been pushed over the edge by the constant surrounding sleaze.

After beating up a number of suspects during arrest, his precinct grows concerned and sends him away to the outskirts of town to investigate the murder of a young woman. Upon arrival, he finds a reflection of himself in the hateful family of the victim, and, during the investigation, falls for Mary Malden (Ida Lupino), the blind sister of the prime suspect who serves as a ray of light in his jet-black life. In theory, On Dangerous Ground should be clunky and awkward; yet, it is kind of brilliant. It looks and feels like a film noir, but that's only a disguise for the more touching instances of psychological study. Everything is presented in such a nonchalant, nearly conventional manner that the power it eventually bears is unexpectedly poignant. Only Ray could direct this sort of material; most do not have the same curious capacity to switch from the hard-boiled to the humane.

The contrast between the slick city streets and the snowy grounds of the more evangelical countryside are competently histrionic. As Wilson enters the fresh, cool landscape, a tidal wave of reversal falls upon us. In the first few minutes of the film, as we watch Wilson fight crime with boorish tenacity, the streets so usually enthralling in film noir turn into something uncomfortably grimy and greasy. Crime is like a horde of ants crawling up and down our arms. The countryside, though still the setting of a murder, has a comforting tranquility. Without people scattered in every nook and cranny, there is a chance to breathe. The entrance of Lupino is reminiscent to that of an angel falling out the sky; with no eyesight, she is unable to see the vile underpinnings of the world. Her kindness is a gift.

As Wilson's life converts from direly violent to one of prospect, there is something stirring that occurs that softened me more than I ever would have thought possible. In film noir, we're used to endless acerbity; it is rare that a character, a policeman who seems so destined to head down a dark path, is given a second chance. Throughout his career, Ryan was mostly typecast as a villain with a booming voice, but in On Dangerous Ground he is given a chance to be expressive and sensitive. It is a surprisingly wistful performance, connecting with ease towards the delicate, soul-baring Lupino.

On Dangerous Ground has been pushed aside as a minor work from the illustrious Nicholas Ray (The Big Heat, Rebel Without a Cause), but it's nevertheless shimmering all these years later. Its audacious attempts to subvert the norms of such a specific genre are absorbingly moving.

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On Dangerous Ground is directed by Nicholas Ray and stars Ida Lupino, Robert Ryan & Ward Bond. It's loosely adapted by Ray and A. I. Bezzerides from Gerald Butler's novel Mad With Much Heart. Cinematography is by George E. Diskant & the music is provided by Bernard Herrmann & Paul Sawtell. The story concerns Ryan's weary, lonely and psychologically bothered cop, Jim Wilson. Who after finally snapping the patience of his superiors is sent to Westham in the rural north to aid a murder case there. The idea is to get him off the streets he's so bitter about and to stop him finally going over the violence tinged edge. It's here, amongst the wintry landscapes, that he is brought into contact with Mary Malden (Lupino). A practically blind woman, Mary holds all the keys to the mystery and to the door at the end of Wilson's journey.

Right from the outset we are in no doubt that Nicholas Ray is about to take us on a noir journey. Herrmann's pulse like score accompanies its nighttime opening, Diskant's photography immediately painting a harsh city where life on the streets is tough. A place where loneliness can eat away at the soul and bleakness pours down off of the bars and the cheaply built apartments. It is in short, firmly encapsulating of Jim Wilson's bitterness and frame of mind. Wilson, once a prime athlete, is mired in solitude, his only telling contribution to society is his work, but that is ebbing away by the day. His mood is not helped by his partners, Pop & Pete, who can easily switch off once their shift has finished - but they have family to go home to, Wilson does not. Wilson's only source of joy comes courtesy of the paperboy he briefly plays football with out on the street (a rare ray of light in the film's moody atmospheric first half).

Then the film shifts for its second act, a shift that has made On Dangerous Ground a most divisive picture in discussions over the years. Sent north to effectively cool down by Captain Brawley (Ed Begley), we find Wilson leaving behind the dank city and entering the snowbound countryside in the north. Dark has become light as it were. The whole style and pace of the film has changed, yet this is still a place tainted by badness. A girl has been murdered and Wilson is still here to locate potential evil. An evil that the murdered girls father (Ward Bond as Walter Brent) wants to snuff out with his own vengeful fury. As the two men track down the killer, Wilson sees much of himself in Brent's anger, but once the guys arrive at Mary Malden's isolated cabin, things shift just a little more.

Said to be a favourite of Martin Scorsese, and an influence for Taxi Driver, On Dangerous Ground has often been called Nicholas Ray's best film by some of his fans (I'd say In A Lonely Place personally). Odd then that Ray himself wasn't happy with the film, calling it a failure and not the finished product he had envisaged. Ray had wanted a three structured movie, not the two part one it is; with the final third being far bleaker and more noirish than the one we actually get. However, and the ending is a bit scratchy for the genre it sits in, it's still a fabulous film that is more about the journey of its protagonist than the diversity caused by its finale. Ryan is terrific, a real powerhouse and believable performance, while Lupino beautifully realises Mary's serene impact on Wilson and the counter opposite to the darkness within the picture. It's a given really, but Herrmann's score is potent, listen out for the opening, the crossover section from city to countryside and the rock face pursuit. While Ray directs with his customary knack of blending the grim with the almost poetic. 8/10