Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

treywillwest I find it shocking that this film is not more celebrated. For me, it is the most rewarding of Nick Ray's films that I've seen, apart, perhaps, from In a Lonely Place- a great, but uncharacteristically conventional, drama from the director. As is typical of Ray, the narrative tone veers in unexpected ways between that of noir and '50s Hollywood romantic melodrama. But never has the juxtaposition of the two genres seemed to me so unpredictable and moving. The first half or so is pure urban noir, and a nasty one at that. The sets are very evocative, and Ray deploys great, and for the time innovative, use of hand-held camera. Robert Ryan gives a great and surprisingly contemporary feeling performance. He's terrifying as a misanthropic, sadistic cop. (The thuggish depiction of the police in this film is gutsily honest even by contemporary standards.) Then, as his character ventures into the dangerous geographies of moral complexity, embodied as rural NY state, Ryan becomes shockingly touching. By showing a degree of mercy for someone who arguably deserves none, he achieves not redemption, but complex humanity. If the tone(s) of the film are pure Ray, the philosophical world-view of this movie reminded me most of those of Bresson's most affirmational works.

clanciai A unique film of most unexpected development, an ambiguous morality causing a confusion of afterthought, and naturally few know how to really assess this masterpiece of a mysterious noir at its best. Of course, it depends very much on what kind of character you are yourself, you will not understand it if you are not a romantic, and you will find the first part objectionable if you are. But for a psychologist, this film is a gold mine.Robert Ryan was never more convincing in this sleeping volcano of a role, a policeman embittered by the constant humdrum nightmare of his job, getting more and more difficult for his colleagues to work with and having a problem with controlling his own violent outbursts. You almost expect him to go mad any moment, and his difficulty in checking this is evident and masterfully displayed. This is the kind of policeman with hidden psychopath tendencies that you have to fear the worst of.Enter Ida Lupino in one of her most sensitive and gripping roles as a blind woman, which she enacts with heartrending subtlety and convincing passion. She lifts the film from the abyss of the constant city nightmare into a level of poetry. The story that follows increases all the time in human interest and suspense. I have no objection against the ending.The amazing qualities of the film are additionally stressed and heightened by an overwhelmingly eloquent score by Bernard Herrmann, which secures a full ten point vote - this is almost like a prelude to "Vertigo".In brief, I agree with most reviewers here, that this is a hidden masterpiece that deserves some positive attention and definitely should be recommended for all times.

Blake Peterson Lovely is not a word I would normally use when describing a film noir, yet here I am, labeling On Dangerous Ground as a lovely piece of work. It is perhaps Nicholas Ray's most upbeat movie, beginning as a hard- hitting cop story and ending on a heartwarming note, with renewal and hopefulness at its beck and call. It is the only tender film noir I've seen. Genre turnarounds can be hurtful to the tone of a film, as no one wants to go to the theaters for a Will Ferrell vehicle only to find it sinking into tragedy rather than an uproariously funny closer. But by tying the pessimistic atmosphere of the first act into the neuroses of the title character, the shift in On Dangerous Ground is largely flattering, a difficult feat that Ray pulls off with unwavering certainty. He believes in the story, and, as a result, so do we. Robert Ryan portrays Jim Wilson, a worn-out detective who is growing increasingly intolerant towards the disreputable scum he deals with on a regular basis. In past film noirs, cops as violent as Wilson would eventually go as far as murdering someone, spending the rest of the movie trying to make their wrongs into rights. But in On Dangerous Ground, it immediately becomes evident that Wilson is capable of saintly good nature but has been pushed over the edge by the constant surrounding sleaze. After beating up a number of suspects during arrest, his precinct grows concerned and sends him away to the outskirts of town to investigate the murder of a young woman. Upon arrival, he finds a reflection of himself in the hateful family of the victim, and, during the investigation, falls for Mary Malden (Ida Lupino), the blind sister of the prime suspect who serves as a ray of light in his jet-black life. In theory, On Dangerous Ground should be clunky and awkward; yet, it is kind of brilliant. It looks and feels like a film noir, but that's only a disguise for the more touching instances of psychological study. Everything is presented in such a nonchalant, nearly conventional manner that the power it eventually bears is unexpectedly poignant. Only Ray could direct this sort of material; most do not have the same curious capacity to switch from the hard-boiled to the humane.The contrast between the slick city streets and the snowy grounds of the more evangelical countryside are competently histrionic. As Wilson enters the fresh, cool landscape, a tidal wave of reversal falls upon us. In the first few minutes of the film, as we watch Wilson fight crime with boorish tenacity, the streets so usually enthralling in film noir turn into something uncomfortably grimy and greasy. Crime is like a horde of ants crawling up and down our arms. The countryside, though still the setting of a murder, has a comforting tranquility. Without people scattered in every nook and cranny, there is a chance to breathe. The entrance of Lupino is reminiscent to that of an angel falling out the sky; with no eyesight, she is unable to see the vile underpinnings of the world. Her kindness is a gift.As Wilson's life converts from direly violent to one of prospect, there is something stirring that occurs that softened me more than I ever would have thought possible. In film noir, we're used to endless acerbity; it is rare that a character, a policeman who seems so destined to head down a dark path, is given a second chance. Throughout his career, Ryan was mostly typecast as a villain with a booming voice, but in On Dangerous Ground he is given a chance to be expressive and sensitive. It is a surprisingly wistful performance, connecting with ease towards the delicate, soul-baring Lupino.On Dangerous Ground has been pushed aside as a minor work from the illustrious Nicholas Ray (The Big Heat, Rebel Without a Cause), but it's nevertheless shimmering all these years later. Its audacious attempts to subvert the norms of such a specific genre are absorbingly moving.Read more reviews at petersonreviews.com

Ilpo Hirvonen Film-noir was a common genre for Nicholas Ray and he had directed several of them, one of which is Humphrey Bogart's career's highlights, In a Lonely Place (1950). Ray is best known for the James Dean classic Rebel without a Cause and the ones familiar with his early film-noirs can see the continuity of noir in it. There's a lot of same kind of sentimentality in On Dangerous Ground that was in 'In a Lonely Place'. It's a film with heart and a non-traditional noir. A hard city cop Jim Wilson isn't afraid of using his fists when the flow of information runs slow. After getting many remarks from his boss, he gets sent to a small town village 70 miles up north. This gives the audience a chance to follow an exciting film-noir story in a different milieu. There in snowy roads and mountains Wilson has to help the local police to solve a murder of a teenage girl. Wilson starts the chase with an aggressive man, who is the father of the murdered girl. As they get going Wilson becomes acquainted with a blind woman, who seems to be having her fingers in the case.Private eyes, desperate men and dangerous women were the common clichés of film-noir. The character of Jim Wilson is played by the film-noir tough guy Robert Ryan, and he is far from a conventional film-noir character. He's a hard-boiled cop, who has been working for the police for 11 years. In his job he sees all kinds of dirty stuff; murder, betrayal, ruthlessness and disregard. All this has made him very cynic, which prepares this character for a good old film-noir. Because just as ruthlessness and moral complexity so is cynicism a hallmark of film-noir. When Jim Wilson gets sent to the small town, he sees himself in the raging father of the murdered girl. For the first time he starts thinking about himself. The woman he later on becomes acquainted with Mary Malden (Ida Lupino "High Sierra") manages to make him think about the bottom loneliness in himself, which he hadn't been thinking that much before. "The people who are around people are sometimes the loneliest." On Dangerous Ground isn't an intelligent study of loneliness, but it does build a fine character. And the sentimentality it exudes offers a nice change from other films of the genre.On Dangerous Ground is a traditional film-noir in an unlikely milieu. It's part of the post-noir 'movement' in the 1950's, filled with disillusions and Cold War paranoia, of which this isn't the best example but for the ones interested in it I'd recommend Kiss Me Deadly (1956). The score of On Dangerous Ground was composed by Bernard Herrman, who is best known for his work with Alfred Hitchcock but he also composed scores for films by Francois Truffaut, Robert Wise and Orson Welles. His music is one of the reasons, which tops the ranking of this film. Herrman has an incredibly talented understanding for musical score and the way he uses stringed instruments to build up tension is marvelous. On Dangerous Ground is a film-noir set in snowy conditions. It holds the interest of its viewer till the last minute and in the end it builds a mature picture of a lonely man, who learns that cynicism won't carry you far.