It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

It's not easy to make 1952 Los Angeles look very interesting. A panoramic view shows mostly smog. But "The Turning Point" does its best and the location shooting is one of its most admirable features. Prominent use is made of the two-block long funicular railway that runs up from "Pond Street", meaning Hill and Olive Streets in L.A. The incline is lined on both sides with inexpensive clapboard housing that suggests "working class", and some scenes are shot in the doorways and apartments. It's all gone now, railway included, to make way for some bland and pitiless "redevelopment" in 1968. Everything in Los Angeles gives way to redevelopment when the property becomes valuable enough. Stores proudly announce, "Serving The Public Since 2012!" "Chinatown" gave us a picture postcard view of Los Angeles in 1937 and made the place look limitlessly livable.At any rate, cynical reporter William Holden and idealistic anti-crime crusader Edmund O'Brien both grew up in the same neighborhood of Central City or whatever Los Angeles is called here. (So did Ted de Corsia, a thug as usual, but not without principles for a change.) O'Brien is anxious to shut down the crooked gangster who runs the city, Ed Begley. I don't want to give away the entire plot but I guess I can say that Alexis Smith is the girl friend with the striking eyes, especially for a Canadian, who is O'Brien's girl friend but finds herself falling for the hard-bitten reporter. She doesn't have much else to do and is chiefly there to add some romantic drama to the story and to demonstrate that both Holden and O'Brien are heterosexual.Overall, it's rather routine but there are some interesting twists (the corruption reaches into O'Brien's own family) and some nicely done scenes. Aside from the hiding, shooting, and general mishigas on the funicular railway, the scene in which O'Brien rushes to the hospital after his friend Holden has been shot is understated. In a movie that was as corrupt as Central City, we'd expect O'Brien to dash into the hospital's reception room, only to be stopped by a doctor in white. "How -- how is he?", O'Brien would stutter. "I'm afraid we were too late," the doc replies sadly but philosophically. I won't describe how this familiar scene is handled here but it's better than you might think.Another memorable incident is the arrest of Ed Begley, who plays a much more delicate slime ball here than he did in "Twelve Angry Men". He pitches a few sliders here. He's sitting at a table playing cards with his gang under a single light bulb in what looks like a basement. Police sirens wail. The goons knock over their chairs as they run away, but Begley sits still, staring at his cards. A policeman's hand holding a pistol slowly enters the frame from the right. Begley slams down his hand, gets to his feet in a dignified way, looks at the cop, finishes off his drink, and exits towards the police. The scene isn't masterful, but William Dieterle has lifted it out of the ordinary.

William Holden is Jerry McKibbon, a reporter who's trying to help his pal Edmond O'Brien as district attorney John Conroy and his girl Alexis Smith as Amanda Waycross expose the big city gangster Ed Begley as Neil Eichelberger with some help from O'Brien's cop father, Tom Tully as Matt Conroy. I'll stop there and just say this was quite a thrilling crime drama though compared to others from the period, also perhaps a little subdued. Still, a suspenseful atmosphere permeates throughout especially when a boxing match where someone tries to kill provides the exciting climax. No big music score is provided but there are some good sequences when the story doesn't take the time for some romance between either of the male leads and Ms. Smith which aren't really needed. So on that note, The Turning Point is well worth the time.

A special prosecutor is assigned to tackle organized crime. Inspired by the Kefauver hearings that had been conducted during the two years preceding this film, this is an earnest but routine drama. It moves at a good pace but becomes bogged down during extended scenes focusing on the hearings. Holden plays a cynical reporter and nobody does cynical better than Holden. In fact he would win the Oscar for playing a cynical POW in his next film, "Stalag 17." O'Brien is OK as the prosecutor. Holden and O'Brien would team up more memorably 17 years later in "The Wild Bunch." Begley is the crime boss while Smith provides the love interest.

William Dieterle's resume shows him to be a solid craftsman only occasionally rising to true distinction. Same can be said of The Turning Point, an often routine noir about a government committee -- this was the era of the televised Kefauver hearings -- investigating mob activity and corruption in a "midwestern" city (though one scene is shot on Los Angeles' funicular railway). Routine also are cynical journalist William Holden and chief investigator Edmond O'Brien, though we're lucky to have the seldom-seen Alexis Smith as a woman attracted to them both. But the best thing in the movie is Ed Begley as the owner of a trucking company who is of course the hoodlum in chief, despite his panelled office and tailored suits. He's memorably slick and squirmy in front of the committee. But his best moment comes when he confides to a henchman his plans to burn down the tenement building where his records are stored: "You don't believe I'd do it?" he jokes. "I don't think a jury would believe it either." The following conflagration is as brutal a plot development as can be found in film noir, with firetrucks, ambulances and bodybags aplenty. It's a scene that sticks with you long after the screenplay's romantic triangle has faded from memory.