kidboots While keeping a respectable blue collar working man front to his family, Louis Beretti (Edmund Lowe) is in reality a shady mobster who has managed to evade police - until now!! Faced with a stint up the river, a young reporter (razor sharp Lee Tracy) convinces the D.A. to send the jewel thief overseas to serve his country - if he makes good his bad record will be wiped!!It's a film that seems to be lost amid genres - starting off as a "public enemy" tale it then goes to War with Lowe donning his Captain Flagg mantle for a bit of insouciance amid the "war is hell" theme. Arriving back a hero - he decides to go straight so he opens a nightclub (complete with bootleg booze!!) but it takes all his strength to resist his old mob. First he finds out that his sister's husband has been gunned down by an embittered rival and while audience members know instantly who it is, it takes Beretti until the end of the movie and by that time he is up to his ears in hunting down a child who has been kidnapped by his old gang.William Fox with his love of gadgetry and his extravagance saw the merits in talking pictures before any other studio. In 1928 he was buying up theatre chains to equip them with sound, an act that would prove his undoing when the stock market crashed, but it did mean that by 1929 John Ford was backed up to take a gamble filming outdoor scenes. There was still an early talkies "experiment" that required two directors - one a seasoned silent director, the other usually an up and comer. Don't know who directed what on this movie set but it definitely wasn't John Ford's finest hour. As with Edmund Lowe who had still to perfect the debonair man about town persona that he would do so in a couple of year's time. His Beretti is too flip with not enough feeling and he is not helped by Catherine Dale Owen, surely the world's worst actress!! She was noted for her beauty but even though she (mercifully) only made a few films her acting didn't improve. She always seemed to me as if she was giving a speech from a podium, even when she was just saying hello!!Definitely the three best actors were Lee Tracy who kept all his scenes natural and terrifically had a pretty big part, Warren Hymer was his usual dependable self as "Big Shot", a childhood pal of Beretti and Frank Albertson in a small part as a wealthy, irresponsible enlisted man - he may have been annoying in a bigger part but as it was his giggling breeziness was just right!!

drjgardner "Born Restless" is a 1930 gangster film that surely rates as one of the worst gangster films of all time, made even worse when you think of the great gangster films that came out in the early 30s – "The Big House" (1930), "Little Caesar" (1931), "Public Enemy" (1931), "The Beast of the City" (1932), "Scarface" (1932), etc.The version I saw had the worst sound of any film I've viewed, so this added to the problem.Edmund Lowe plays the star. Lowe was a leading man in the silent era ("East of Suez". "What Price Glory") and he plays this one as if it were a silent film, and given how poor the dialogue is, you wish it was a silent film. He did some good work later on (e.g., "Dinner at Eight", Dillinger") but in this film he is wooden.Lowe isn't the only wooden actor. Almost all the scenes are staged with nary a movement.This is a John Ford production and Ford gets credit as a co-director. It reminds us that while Ford gave us about a dozen of the finest films ever made, he had a lot of clunkers too, and among his finest films I can't recall a gangster film.All things considered there isn't any reason to watch this film. You may be curious, as was I, about viewing an early John Ford film, but give this one a miss and go with "The Lost Patrol" (1934) or "The Informer" (1935).

MartinHafer How much of this film was directed by Andrew Bennison and how much by John Ford is your guess. All I know is that with Ford at the helm, I sure expected more from this very flat film."Born Reckless" is a gangster film with rather odd casting. Edmund Lowe stars in this film and frankly he didn't seem at all the gangster type. Part of this might be because I've only seen Lowe in about a dozen films (and he made over a hundred) and none of them ha him playing anything even closely resembling a criminal. Usually, he played very sophisticated and cultured sorts of men and with his lovely diction it just felt odd to have him hanging out with the sorts of Warren Hymer in the film--Hymer usually playing idiots or thugs. So, from the onset I had trouble accepting Lowe in the film--although I like him as an actor.The other problem I noticed is that the film didn't seem sure whether or not to make Lowe a bad guy or a good guy. At the beginning he seemed kind of bad--after all, he was involved in an armed robbery. then, however, only minutes later he seemed like a swell fella when he met his sister's new boyfriend. And, when the police brought him in because of the robbery, he agreed to serve in WWI in order to avoid prison--and he served with distinction. Later, after he got out, he was not the most law-abiding of citizens (opening a speakeasy), but he also had a very, very moral code--one you'd certainly not expect from the owner of a speakeasy!! As a result, the film was muddled despite having some very interesting elements and a dandy violent finale. With all the great gangster films of the early 30s, my attitude is that you should see all of them first! With wonderful films like "Scarface", "Littel Caesar" and "Public Enemy" (among others), why mess with this mediocre and poorly written film?

Michael_Elliott Born Reckless (1930) * 1/2 (out of 4) John Ford drama about a wannabe gangster (Edmund Lowe) who gets busted after a heist but instead of going to prison, the judge makes a deal with him. Instead of jail the man will enlist for WW1 and if he serves his country proudly then the judge will throw out the evidence against him. This all goes well and the man returns home a war hero but he soon learns that his old gang has killed his brother in law so he goes out for revenge no matter what it might cost him. In the end, this film is killed by its standard and routine screenplay, which tries to do way too much and it doesn't do any of them in any original form. The movies tries to mix the gangster genre with a war genre with an added touch of the revenge drama but all three are boring and don't feature anything we hadn't seen countless times in the silent era. I've never been a fan of Lowe but he actually comes off decent here and plays the role off as well as can be expected. The supporting cast, including Lee Tracy, are all standard and forgettable. The climax of the movie is certainly the best thing and Ford's use of a swinging door leads to a great thing but there's nothing else going on here.