PORT OF NEW YORK is a low budget crime thriller of 1949 in which a couple of narcotics agents go up against a criminal organisation smuggling drugs in through the New York docks. As a film it's very much par for the course and a product of its era, mostly a police procedural with a few scenes of interest here and there. There's a large cast but the characters tend to be underwritten so it's difficult to care about whether the heroes live or die; this is the kind of genre that would reach its peak some 20 to 30 years later in the films made by Roy Scheider and his contemporaries. Chiefly of interest is the casting of a youthful Yul Brynner - with hair! - as the bad guy, supported by a debuting Neville Brand as a snarling henchman.
Review of Port of New York
