City of Fear

The combination of Lerner's directing, Ballard's cinematography, Lawrence's editing, and Goldsmith's music, makes for a super slick classic noir film shot through with the French New Wave. It's interesting watching this just having come out of a pandemic; the canister could just as easily have contained SARS-CoV-2. And ironically, if the canister was actually full of cocaine that would likely have caused more damage than even the Cobalt-60.

The director and star of Murder By Contract reunite, with less spectacular results. The best parts are when Edwards is onscreen; the police work is pretty ho-hum stuff, and there isn't a strong detective character. Nice photography though, and using real locations is always a bonus in noir. One of the highlights is the tense score, kind of a Herrmann-esque jazz thing going on. Not a great movie by any measure, but a quick dose of noir fun with a side of nuclear era paranoia.