The Big Operator

Rooney does his customary believable job as a Hoffa-like labor boss being skewered by a panel of senators. He hides behind the Fifth Amendment but his tongue slips once when asked about one of his hoodlums and the rest of the picture is one shock after another. Cochran plays a straight heroic type whose son is kidnaped by Rooney's goons when Cochran mounts an offense against Rooney's tyrannical rule of the union. Suspense is high and so is the violence: Torme, Cochran's best friend, is burned and a hood is tossed into a cement mixer. This film was made by the same group that did the dreadful THE BEAT GENERATION the same year. Zugsmith, Haas, Danton, Cochran, Coogan...