Force of Evil

Joe Morse is a lawyer working for Ben Tucker, a racketeer who runs an illegal betting operation in New York. Joe wants to bring the city's many small bookmakers under one large organization, but his older brother Leo, who runs a modest betting business of his own, refuses to join and prefers to keep his distance from the big-time gangsters. Joe tries to pull Leo into the combine anyway, setting the two brothers against each other as the consolidation moves forward.

Abraham Polonsky directed and co-wrote the film with Ira Wolfert, working from Wolfert's novel. It was Polonsky's first film as director, following his work as a screenwriter, and it was produced by Bob Roberts for Enterprise Productions and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. John Garfield plays Joe, with Thomas Gomez as Leo and Marie Windsor, Howland Chamberlain, Roy Roberts and Paul Fix among the supporting cast; twenty-seven performers are credited.

The film runs 79 minutes and took about 1 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds a 7.2 rating from roughly 8,300 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.6 from around 145 votes, so the larger and smaller audiences agree broadly but not exactly. A critics' rating of 8.8 from 18 reviews places professional assessments noticeably higher than the audience scores.