A fairly standard noir romance from a man who would come to change cinema forever. A fighter who's been down on his luck finds he has little to hold on to when he meets a beautiful young dancer. However, her emotional entanglement with her manager puts him in a deadly situation when the boss demonstrates that he only has her to lose.

You can see the seeds of Kubrick's genius especially in the framing and composition of his shots, many of which involve brilliant use of mirrors and windows. The story also uses a bold amount of flashback, more than once going two layers deep into the past and surfacing to the present once in the middle only to plunge back under. Unfortunately the story is just a bit too generic to stand out, and the final chase/fight scene slightly overstays its welcome. Solid little flick but it can't touch the masterpieces yet to come.

Stanley Kubrick Ranked