Shield for Murder may very well be the most violent film noir I’ve ever seen. Hard-boiled depictions of violence has always been a mainstay of film noir, but Shield for Murder takes it to new, brutal heights. There are only a handful of on-screen deaths, but they are not clean killings. In most film noir (and early Westerns, too), a single bullet is enough to end a man's life. But here, death requires a terrible toll: one man is mugged and murdered in cold blood, another is beaten and then thrown down a flight of stairs, and the climactic gunfight spans several buildings full of innocent bystanders. In the film's most shocking moment, the protagonist, a crooked cop named Lieutenant Barney Nolan, pistol-whips two private investigators in a crowded restaurant. This scene ranks with the coffee pot assault from The Big Heat (1953) and the coke bottle attack from The Long Goodbye (1973) as one of the most unexpected and unnerving acts of violence in all of noir. It doesn't help that Lieutenant Nolan isn't the most sympathetic character: desperate to escape the hellish monotony of blue-collar life and the Sisyphean struggle against crime and social decay, Nolan coldly murders and robs a bookmaker for $25,000. Nolan wants to use the money to buy a house with his girlfriend and maybe, just maybe, start a new kind of life. There are just two problems: the bookmaker's boss fully suspects Nolan of the robbery and wants the money back and, unbeknownst to Nolan, there was a witness to the killing. And so Nolan gets pulled into a web of violence, theft, and doomed dreams. To actor (and co-director) Edmond O'Brien's credit, Nolan isn't a total monster. Indeed, we may be repulsed by his crimes, but we appreciate his sincere love for his girlfriend and his desire to give her a better life. But murder and robbery is something that neither the audience, nor the bleak universe of noir, can forgive.
9/10
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