The Big Combo

The Big Combo is a 1955 film noir directed by Joseph Lewis and starring Cornel Wilde, Richard Conte, Brian Donlevy, and Jean Wallace, and featuring Lee Van Cleef. I'll watch anything with Lee Van Cleef in it, and this is a good one.

via Internet Archive:

Slant Magazine says, "The Big Combo is scary, and disturbing, because it never entirely gives over to the kind of outright hysteria that might serve as a catharsis, and so the feelings of cloaked desperation are never expunged." Images Journal has a positive review. DVD Talk says,

The Big Combo is a rewarding thriller with a good handle on the hardboiled crime saga circa 1955. It's especially instructive as an example of a movie with a visual surface that completely hides its low budget origin. Few films so convincingly seem to be Somewhere when they're really taking place in a non-budget Nowhere. Sex, violence, and silhouettes of alienated characters in the fog ... The Big Combo puts the graphic noir back into film noir.

Rotten Tomatoes has a critics rating of 92%.