Crossfire (RKO Radio). In Richard Brooks's wartime novel, The Brick Foxhole, some U.S. soldiers got drunk on a civilian's liquor, suspected him of being a homosexual, and beat him to death. RKO has changed the civilian (well played by Sam Levene) into a Jew, and Crossfire emerges first in the field in Hollywood's anti-anti-Semitic sweepstakes.*
Much of the movie is as brutally effective as a series of kicks in the solar plexus. Especially memorable: its accurately ugly talk, characterization and atmosphere, strung up to high melodramatic tension—one talent in which Hollywood still leads the world. Robert Young does modestly and well as...
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