Plot
After he's called in to investigate the brutal killing of Joseph Samuels (Sam Levene), who was found dead at his home, police investigator Finlay (Robert Young) discovers there may be a murderer among a group of demobilized soldiers, who had been seen with Samuels and his female friend at a hotel bar that night.
Meanwhile, Sergeant Keeley (Robert Mitchum), concerned that his friend Mitch (George Cooper) may be the prime suspect, decides to investigate the murder to clear his friend's name. To both investigators, each suspected soldier relays their version of that night through a flashback. The first to step up is Montgomery (Robert Ryan) and the rest are Floyd (Steve Brodie), Mitch, and a possible witness Ginny (Gloria Grahame).
As Finlay and Keeley slowly piece together the fragments of that night, they realize there is one possible motive that may have driven the killer to beat an innocent to death, which prompts Finlay to set up a trap to expose the killer.
Read more about this topic: Crossfire (film)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“But, when to Sin our byast Nature leans,
The careful Devil is still at hand with means;
And providently Pimps for ill desires:
The Good Old Cause, reviv’d, a Plot requires,
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up Common-wealths and ruine Kings.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)