Two murders in the first fifteen minutes set the pace for "The Mob," a B+ cops-and-robbers about waterfront racketeering. Oscar-winning Broderick Crawford has a grand time slugging, drinking, and wisecracking his way through the picture as a city detective who goes underground to crack a crime syndicate.
An unusually fraudulent advertising campaign has promised that this picture depicts "the mob that defied the Kefauver Committee" and reveals the shocking truth about "those sixteen unsolved murders." This is hogwash in the best ad-man tradition; the film states that any relation to real persons or places is purely coincidental. But "The Mob" still has plenty to recommend it in Crawford's excellent acting, its snappy dialogue in the best Raymond Chandler style, and the constant suspense of characters in double roles. After an hour or so of general mayhem in alleys, bars, cheap hotels, and black sedans, the Law finally closes in with the aid of several cagy scientific gimmicks and the Villain gets it in the back. The only revelation here is on someone's heaving thorax, but "The Mob" is still good entertainment.
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