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Like the movie’s rattletrap trucks lurching down the highway as they carry way-too-heavy loads, the characters in Jules Dassin’s brilliantly volatile Thieves' Highway struggle under psychological and moral baggage until they can lay their burdens down. Working from a novel and script by A.I. Bezzerides, Dassin made this swift, fluid melodrama in 1949, after Brute Force and The Naked City. Thieves’ Highway is his best American movie. It breathes the same air of risk and desperation as his made-in-Europe masterpieces, London’s Night and the City (1950) and the Paris-set Rififi (1954). But it has a rich sensuality all its own.

The film’s hero, Nick Garcos (Richard Conte) is an ex G.I. who has just returned home from a far east journey. With plans of showering his family members with gifts, he shows up at the family home in Fresno, California, when he learns that his beloved father is a recent amputee - a victim of a truck accident. His father, Papa Garcos (Morris Carnovsky) was a long haul produce driver delivering fruit and vegetables to local markets. On a recent run to San Francisco, he entered into an agreement with Mike Figlia (Lee J. Cobb), an unscrupulous produce vendor to purchase a load of tomatoes but Figlia got the old man drunk, sending him on his way without paying him. His departure led to an accident resulting in the loss of his legs and ultimately the loss of his livelihood - his job. Nick becomes enraged and vows to seek revenge on the man responsible...
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