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Dennis O'Brien: Did you ever spend ten nights in a Turkish bath looking for a man? Don't.
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Dennis O'Brien: Look, I've been thinking this over. I don't go for that killing a T-Man. I don't like this set up and I don't want any part of it.
Moxie: What's the matter, you getting the wim-wams?
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Narrator: At last they were ready. They met on Belle Isle to quiz each other for the most important examination of their lives. They had to know all the answers. Failure to do so would mean a bad grade later on in the shape of a bullet or an ice pick.
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The Schemer: How did you find me?
Dennis O'Brien: I could smell you.
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The Schemer: Yeah. They been giving me the cold shoulder lately. Giving me the fish-eye, kicking me around. What's behind all this?
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Elmer Lincoln Irey: These are the six fingers of the Treasury Department fist. And that fist hits fair, but hard.
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Amazon.com
Anthony Mann was a poverty-row director with ambition when he transformed this story of undercover Treasury agents (based on a collection of true cases) into a moody, alienated drama about two lawmen living a shadowed life in the underworld where a blown cover means death. Square-jawed Dennis O'Keefe, a former leading man turned beefy B movie tough guy, and Alfred Ryder star as the titular T-men who take over a counterfeiting investigation when their predecessor is killed, posing as street thugs to infiltrate their way into the gang and living the dangerous life of the gangster to the hilt. The documentary-style realism, with its authoritative narrator, location shooting, and stock-shot interludes of shuffling papers and laboratory testing, is given a nightmarish dimension with stark sets lit in claustrophobic shadows, creating an abstract, eerie emptiness. Penned by John C. Higgins (who wrote Mann's previous film, Railroaded!), and shot by the brilliant cinematographer John Alton, T-Men is raw in comparison to the smoother, more handsome studio noirs such as The Maltese Falcon and Out of the Past. Saddled with often awkward dialogue and hackneyed narration, this low-budget gem derives its power from the brutal violence (often offscreen but no less unsettling for it) and spare style, and the desperation in the hard faces of the unglamorous actors. Mann, Alton, Higgins, and star O'Keefe reteamed for the moody Raw Deal the next year. --Sean Axmaker
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