****SPOILERS**** Powerhouse movie that shows how men in desperate situations can go so far as sacrifice their best friends and family members and not realize what monsters that they are by doing it. Until like in the case of bull-like Gypo Noland, Victor Mclaglen, it's too much too late.
It's 1922 and the hight of the Black & Tan Irish revolt against the mighty British Empire with the Tans, British occupying troops, on the lookout for wanted Irish Republican rebel Frankie McPhillip, Wallace Ford, wanted for the killing of a Briish soldier. Gypo a good, really the best, friend of the fugitive McPhillip is down on his luck not having a job with his girlfriend Katie, Margot Grahame, forced to turn tricks in the Dublin red-light district in order to pay her rent.
After an outraged Gypo worked over a potential John who want's to spend a few hours with Katie, for a shilling or two, an angry Katie tells the not so bright Gyro that he's preventing her for supporting herself with the only bankable asset she has , her body. Katie also tells Gypo that he should wake up to reality and realize what a desperate situation that she's in. Telling the mind-numbed Gypo that it would only cost ten pound sterling for her to go to America, and get out of the poverty of Ireland, Gypo suddenly remembers a poster of his good friend Frankie McPhillip that he just saw announcing a reward of 20 pound sterling. Thats enough money for both him and Kaite to travel to America.
Gypo going to a local Dublin flop house and soup kitchen to get a free meal is startled to run into his friend Frankie McPhillip. Frankie tells him that he snuck into Dublin to see both his mother Mrs. McPhillip and sister Mary, Una O'Connor & Heather Angel, and if he can make sure that everything is safe for him to go home and later leave for his Irish Republican unit outside the city.
All Gypo can see in Frankie's face is the 20 pound sterling reward for him being turned into the police! Without as much of a second thought, after he assured Frankie that everything is all right, Gypo secretly goes to the police and informs on his friend who's later shot and killed in a police and Tan shootout in his moms house.
With the deed done the chief of police hands over the 20 pound sterling, much like thirty pieces of silver, to an almost emotionless Gypo who takes it and sneaks out the back door of the police station so that one one can see him. You can see in the police chief's face and actions that he has nothing but utter contempt for Gypo's betrayal of his friend Frankie McPhillip. Even though he was wanted for murder and an enemy of the British Empire. That's how low traitors or informers are held even by those whom they secretly work for.
Gypo turns out to be his own worst enemy after his betrayal of Frankie as his conscience takes control of his mind. Gypo sees and hears everyone, including his unsuspecting girlfriend Katie, pointing a finger and implicating him in Frankie's betrayal and death at the hands of the British authorities. Gypo's guilty mind has him getting himself royally and gloriously drunk, on the reward money, that by the time he's forced to to admit his crime to his Irish Republican Army colleagues, who had the almost dead drunk and slobbering Gypo on trial, the money was just about gone in his partying drinking and whoring.
Whatever good feelings, if that's possible, that you had for the weak minded and strong shouldered Gypo was completely demolished when in an act of total desperation, in order to keep from getting shot, he falsely implicate an innocent man Mulligan, Donald Meek, in his crime of informing on his friend Frankie McPhillip. Which is quickly exposed as a total fabrication by non other then the guilt-ridden Gypo himself. The dye is then cast as straws are drawn for who would be the one to put a bullet in Gypo's head for the final gut spilling chapter of this heart wrenching and unforgettable Crime & Punishment classic.

OK, I am blessed. I have seen two very strong stage productions, the one in New York with the original cast, and another at the San Diego Rep (Rosina Reynolds and Monique Gaffney, you rock!). Compared to either of these the movie is almost unwatchable. I've been plodding through the DVD for the past two evenings and am still not finished. Way too much extraneous dialog, and waaay too many added scenes and people. Yes, the four major performances are quite good, esp. Ms. Streep's. But comparing stage to film is definitely an example of "less is more." The thickening of the play to satisfy film-goers' need for scenic variety and specificity was a poor choice. Please, please, please go find a stage production somewhere near you.