Film Forum

(1961, John Frankenheimer) To a percussive jazz score, a group of teenage gang members stalk into rival turf in broad daylight and blow away the blind enemy “armorer;” up-from-the-slums Assistant DA Burt Lancaster must contend with his own heritage, while ultimately deciding whether rotten no-goods might actually be innocent as charged. 35mm. Approx. 103 min.

Reviews

“A kind of non-musical east side variation on West Side Story. It is a socio- logical cussword puzzle, a twisted riddle aimed at detection of the true motivation for juvenile crime, as set against the backdrop of New York’s teeming East Harlem district in which neighborhood nationalities mobilize into youthful raiding parties at the drop of a psychotic frustration.”
– Variety