Yul Brynner (with a full head of hair) made his feature film debut as the villain in PORT OF NEW YORK. Brynner stars as a vicious drug kingpin who specializes in outsmarting the police. But after the body count connected to his operation starts to mount, the police double their efforts to end his smuggling scheme, risking one of their own in a treacherous undercover operation. PORT OF NEW YORK is an overlooked police procedural made a couple of years after the more well-known T-MEN, and both stand as forerunners to television programs like DRAGNET. The film features the high contrast black and white photography common to crime and police films of the period (the genre aesthetic later dubbed
film noir ) as well as some remarkable location shooting featuring an extraordinary look at 1940s New York.
