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Movie: The Narrow Margin

Film noir staple Charles McGraw stars as hard-boiled cop Walter Brown, who's assigned to transport a mobster's moll (played to perfection by Marie Windsor) from Chicago to Los Angeles -- where she's set to testify before the grand jury. Naturally, danger turns up on the train in the form of syndicate goons sent to silence the witness; trouble is, they have no idea what she looks like. Richard Fleischer helmed this fast-paced crime thriller.

 Could have been so much better.  A female cop is acting as the gangster's moll.  Walter Brown doesn't know it, and he treats her like a criminal.  Then . . . it all comes out and she is killed.  Should be quite a moral awakening, but her death happens and then is totally ignored.  In its place we get a coming romance between the real gangster's moll (who really wanted no part of the mob) and our cop.  Weak ending after a terrific set-up.

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