The Undercover Man

Frank Warren is a Treasury agent. His job is to put the head of a crime organisation away for tax evasion. The man's name is never even said plainly; everyone calls him the big fellow. Frank goes after the books, looks for witnesses, works the neighbourhood. But everyone he talks to is frightened; some go silent, some disappear. Part of the police force is on the other side. His wife wants him to drop it. In the end the case is settled not in the street but inside the numbers. Joseph H. Lewis directs; eighty-five minutes, with Glenn Ford as Frank and Nina Foch and James Whitmore in the cast. The story comes from the real Treasury investigation that led to Al Capone's tax trial. That is the film's method too: not the gun but the ledger.