Force of Evil is a 1948 American crime film noir directed by Abraham Polonsky, who was previously known as a screenwriter for the boxing filmBody and Soul. Like Body and Soul, the film starred John Garfield. The film was adapted by Abraham Polonsky and Ira Wolfert from Wolfert's novel Tucker's People. The film marked the first on screen acting role of Beau Bridges, who was 7 years old at the time of the film's release. In 1994, Force of Evil was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Plot
The drama tells of a lawyer, Joe Morse, working for a powerful gangster, Tucker, who wishes to consolidate and control the numbers racket in New York. This means assuming control of the many smaller numbers rackets, one of which is run by Morse's older brother Leo Morse. The brothers are both tainted by the underworld and neither are free from corruption; the terse, melodramatic thriller incorporates realist location photography, almost poetic dialogue and frequent biblical allusions.
When the film was released, the staff at Variety magazine gave the film a mixed review: Bosley Crowther, the film critic for The New York Times, liked the film, and wrote, "But for all its unpleasant nature, it must be said that this film is a dynamic crime-and-punishment drama, brilliantly and broadly realized. Out of material and ideas that have been worked over time after time, so that they've long since become stale and hackneyed, it gathers suspense and dread, a genuine feeling of the bleakness of crime and a terrible sense of doom. And it catches in eloquent tatters of on-the-wing dialogue moving intimations of the pathos of hopeful lives gone wrong." According to MGM records the film earned $948,000 in the US and $217,000 overseas. In the decades since its release, Force of Evil has been recognized as a masterpiece of the film noir genre, powerful in its poetic images and language, by film critics and historians such as William S. Pechter and Andrew Dickos. Its influence has been acknowledged many times by Martin Scorsese in the making of his crime dramas.
