Crime in the Streets

“How can you tell them to be good when their girl friends like them better when they're bad!...”

Ben Wagner (James Whitmore), a social worker, walks into a neighborhood of tenements and hangs around a street gang, convinced he can talk its boys out of the crime they drift toward. Frankie Dane (John Cassavetes) leads them, with Angelo "Baby" Gioia (Sal Mineo) close beside him, and Don Siegel keeps the camera tight on their faces. The stakes are the boys themselves, and whether anyone's help reaches them before the street does.