SOURCE: "At Loew's State," in The New York Times, December 27, 1948, p. 16.

Crowther was an American film critic and journalist long associated with the New York Times. In the following positive review, he argues that Force of Evil reveals Polonsky as a director of "imagination and unquestioned craftsmanship."

It may be that Force of Evil, which opened … on Christmas Day, is not the sort of picture that one would choose for Yuletide cheer. It's a cold, hard, relentless dissection of a bitter, aggressive young man who lets himself get in too deep as the lawyer for a "policy racket" gang. And as such it is full of vicious people with whom the principal boy associates, it reeks of greed and corruption and it ends in death and despair.

But for all its unpleasant nature, it must be said that this film is a dynamic crime-and-punishment drama, brilliantly and broadly...