Abandoning Philip K. Dick's resource of potential in favor of Hollywood conventionalism in its final third, the film adaptation of "Second Variety" is merely two-thirds competent.
As one of the bleakest American films of the 1950s, it remains a bold meditation on the American Dream, detriments of extremes, and the endurance of pain through faith.
The film is an immensely successful genre experiment as a liberal political allegory that can also be enjoyed as a purely entertaining duel between the inexorable forces of good and evil.
The film promotes an insightful psychological examination of the universality of human nature but ultimately seems abridged despite its lengthy running time.
A transcendent collaboration between revolutionary artists, the film is a stunning meditation on the essence and power of form and burgeoning sentimentalities of a transforming world of cinema.