Here’s a flashy, violent British film noir in the classic Warner Bros. fashion, an on-the-lam thriller set in the postwar U.K. underworld where a war hero pays the price for going wrong.

“They Made Me A Fugitive,” the film that the Brits saw as “I Became a Criminal,” is a terrific showcase for Trevor Howard, Sally Gray and Griffith Jones, as sadistic as bad guys came in the Blighty cinema of the day.

The title on both sides of the Atlantic was meant to conjure up memories of “They Made Me a Criminal,” a proto-noir Warner Bros. hit starring John Garfield back in 1939. The Internet Movie Database lists the film under its 1948 British title — “I Became a Criminal” — with its heavily-cut U.S. (original release) running time (1:18). Suffice it to say, those “restored” 23 minutes matter.

Jones, of “The Face Behind the Scar,” plays a gang leader who runs his contraband smuggling operation out of a funeral home, conveniently advertised with the huge letters “R.I.P.” attached to the roof. Our deadly but dapper leader’s name is a tad on-the-nose — “Narcissus,” aka “Narcy.”

Narcy figures their hide-the-cigarettes, nylon stockings and even drugs in coffins operation is missing something. That’s why he’s recruited “Clem” Morgan (Howard), an RAF pilot who escaped from a German POW camp during the war only to crawl into a bottle once back home.

“He’s got class,” Narcy growls to his minions. “We need a bit of that in our business.”

Morgan, in his cups with his “fiance” Ellen (Eve Ashley) when Narcy finds him at the pub, has no idea the extent of Narcy’s villainy — the drugs, the fact that he’s sweet on Ellen. It takes that first burglary, where the sober and suddenly moral (no drug smuggling for him) Morgan mouthes off one time too many for it all to come crashing around his ears.

He’s framed for running over a cop, tossed in prison and only somewhat wised-up when Sally, the chorus girl (Sally Gray, fiery) Narcy dumped for Ellen visits him in stir. Damned if Morgan doesn’t effect an escape (brushed over) and set out on a cross-country trek back to London to have his revenge.

Director Alberto Cavalcanti, billed simply as “Cavalcanti,” was a Brazilian expat who started his film career in France, made movies across many genres as journeymen filmmakers often did back then. He did romances (“Affairs of a Rogue”), a pretty good Dickens adaptation (“The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickelby”) and durable thrillers such as “For Them That Trespass” and “I Became a Criminal.”

He and the production team give us a gritty world of postwar privation and violence, populated with colorful chorines — lots of backstage at the music hall scenes — femme fatales and one sadist who isn’t above beating women when he isn’t ordering his thugs to murder.

“They Made me a Fugitive” doesn’t really get on its feet until Morgan slips out of prison while working on a road gang. He eludes a nationwide manhunt and stumbles into a wealthy country wife (Vida Hope) with “the whole damned world and his dog after my skin.” She agrees to help him, provided he does her “a service…I want you to shoot my husband.”

A testy, interrogatory exchange with an overnight trucker who picks him up and constant radio updates of his progress build suspense. Will he get to Sally before Narcy starts killing off her and others who “know” about the frameup?

A cop (Derek Birch) warns her that Narcy will “slit that pretty little throat of yours from ear to ear,” as if she doesn’t know “you’ve stuck it out just a few inches too far.”

Howard, a last minute casting replacement, establishes the tough guy edge that would serve him in decades of military and later authority figure roles. Gray renders her “Mata Hari” figure in unsentimental shades. And Rene Ray, Mary Merrall, Jack McNaughton, Charles Farrell and others perfectly populate this cinematic underworld.

Film buffs will note that future “Dr. Strangelove” Russian ambassador Peter Bull has the chewy mob informant role. And that portly, gruff underworld club manager? That’s Disney cartoon voice, “The Time Machine” and TV’s “Family Affair” co-star Sebastian Cabot.

I was a tad underwhelmed by the opening acts of “They Made Me a Fugitive,” but pretty much bowled over by the breathless, shadowy film noir that breaks out at roughly the midway point. Howard’s flinty, furious way with a line, Griffin’s violence-is-how-I-panic mania, Gray’s sober-minded sizing-up “what kind of man” Morgan is before lighting his imprisoned fuse, all take this picture to a fever pitch that can only end in mayhem.

Drugs, alcoholism, torture and mob executions give this film noir a most unBritish (for the period) edge.

No, fight choreography wasn’t a thing back then. But we buy into the life-or-death stakes this crew tangles into and never let our sympathies get out of hand, because “They Made Me a Fugitive” doesn’t let Mr. “I Became a Criminal” off the hook for the bloody, murderous mess he’s got himself into.

Rating: TV-PG, violence

Cast: Sally Gray, Trevor Howard, Griffith Jones, Rene Ray, Mary Merrall, Jack McNaughton and Peter Bull.

Credits: Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, scripted by Noel Langley, based on a novel by Jackson Budd. A Warner Bros. release on Tubi, other streamers.

Running time: 1:41