Michael_Elliott Chicago Confidential (1957) * 1/2 (out of 4) Boring, low-budget crime drama about racketeers forcing their way into unions. In this case, a D.A. (Brian Keith) swears to bring them down by ends up locking away an innocent man (Dick Foran) and with the help of his girlfriend (Beverly Garland) they try to get the real killer. CHICAGO CONFIDENTIAL is trying hard to be dark, cool and serious but it pretty much fails on all three levels. To be honest though, this here really isn't any worse than the countless "B" crime pictures that were released around this time as they all feature the same limitations. Some of those are obviously the budget but I think a good director and cast can turn this into a benefit. That really doesn't happen here and what we're left with is just one clichéd scene after another and it all boils up to a climax that you'll see coming from a mile away. What made this film so hard to get through was the Dragnet-like voice overs that narrate the entire film. I always found this routine to be rather cheap and pathetic for a number of reasons but the biggest one is that it really tells the viewer that they're too stupid to understand what's going on. That's what happens the majority of the time but this film goes a step further by not even bothering to have the action in the film do anything and instead we're just told what should be happening with the narration. The plot of this film is so weak because it seems they didn't try to have anything happen in front of our eyes and instead we're told everything. Keith, Garland and Foran are fun to watch but even they can't save this film. Elisha Cook, Jr. plays a drunk who holds some key evidence.

dougdoepke The "Confidential" part was meant to piggy-back on the popular appeal of the lurid magazine of the same name, while the labor racketeering theme tied in with headline Congressional investigations of the day. However, despite the A-grade B-movie cast and some good script ideas, the movie plods along for some 73 minutes. It's a cheap-jack production all the way. What's needed to off-set the poor production values is some imagination, especially from uninspired director Sidney Salkow. A few daylight location shots, for example, would have helped relieve the succession of dreary studio sets. A stylish helmsman like Anthony Mann might have done something with the thick-ear material, but Salkow treats it as just another pay-day exercise. Too bad that Brian Keith's typical low-key style doesn't work here, coming across as merely wooden and lethargic. At the same time, cult figure Elisha Cook Jr. goes over the top as a wild-eyed drunk. Clearly, Salkow is no actor's director. But, you've got to hand it to that saucy little number Beverly Garland who treats her role with characteristic verve and dedication. Too bad, she wasn't in charge. My advice-- skip it, unless you're into ridiculous bar-girls who do nothing else but knock back whiskeys in typical strait-jacketed 50's fashion.

sol1218 ***SPOILERS*** Hard hitting movie about the mob or "Syndicates" attempted takeover of the biggest union in Chicago the Workers National Brotherhood, or WNB for short. This devious plan is cooked up by disbarred lawyer and former Al Capone gang member Alan Dixon, Garvin Gordon,who plans to turn the WNB into a front for the Syndicates illegal activities; loansharking gambling and prostitution.The man running for president of the WNB the beloved and respected, by all the union members, Arthur "Artie" Blaine, Dick Foran, is about to get a boost from his friend the accountant of the union Mickey Partos, John Morley, who's to turn over the crooked and mobbed up president Ken Harrison, Douglas Kennedy, cooked books to Chicago's districts attorney Jim Fremont, Brian Keith. It just happens that Mickey is kidnapped and murdered by Harrisons hood's who plant evidence, the murder weapon, at the scene of the crime implicating the innocent Artie Blaine.Harrison and his boss the behind the scenes Alan Dixon are now ready to pull off a "Hat Trick" in their planned takeover of the WNB union. Get rid of of Mickey Partos, which they did, frame Artie Blaine for his murder and then, with Artie's reputation as an incorruptible union leader go straight down the toilet, pave the way for the mob-controlled Harrison to get re-elected unanimously, with no one running against him, by the hapless and disgruntled union members. There's was just one thing that both Dixon & Harrison didn't plan on a drunken rummy, and former WNB union member, Candymouth Duggan, Elisha Cook Jr, who staggered on the scene and found the gun that killed Mickey Partos; the gun that his best friend Artie was supposed to have killed him with!Despite Harrison screwing up it didn't take long for him and his boys to get Candymouth to change his story telling the D.A, Jim Fremont, that he found the gun in Partos' car ,which was at the bottom of Lake Michigan at the time Candymouth came on the scene, tying Artie to Partos' murder. Harrison also had a key witness, Artie's next door neighbor, Sylvia Clarkson, Beverly Tyler, change her testimony which at first cleared Artie of the crime. With all the evidence pointing at him Artie is convinced of first degree murder and slated to have a date with the state of Illinois' electric chair. Feeling that he's now on a roll D.A Fremont is a shoe-in to be elected the next governor by having Artie Blaine sent to the death house. Still Artie's girlfriend Laura Burton, Beverly Garland, refuses to give up on Artie's innocence and it's her bulldog like determination to get the truth out that in the end saves Artie's life and puts Harrison & Co. either in the city morgue or behind bars in the state penitentiary.Documentary-style crime flick has all the ingredients of a great film noir classic but gets a bit carried away with the violence which makes it just another crime shoot-him-up movie. It's hard to believe that the Chicago D.A Jim Fremont would go out on his own risking both his and his wife's Helen, Phillis Coates, lives in tackling the "Chcago Syndicate" almost single handed. This without using the entire Chicago Police Force as well as, with Harrison & Dixon also involved in tax fraud, the FBI which were easily at his disposal!Fremont does in the end get the job done and has Artie Blaine freed and restored back to being the president of the WNB Union but he could have done it a lot easier if he only let the Chicago Police and US Justice Departmet do the job themselves. Not by trying to be a hero and go solo and very possibly end up together with the late Mickey Partos sleeping with the fishes. But then the movie wouldn't have been as exciting as it turned out to be.P/S Besides Phillis Coates who played Lois Lane in the Adventures of Superman TV series there's also in the movie "Chicago Confidential" John Hamilton playing Artie's defense attorney Emory Morgan. Hamilton was also a member of the Superman TV cast as the city of Metropolis' newspaper The Daily Planet's editor Perry "Great Caesars' Ghost" White.

Robert J. Maxwell There's nothing particularly original about this story of corrupt unions on one side and the "chief attorney" on the other. The stark but unimaginative lighting and photography stems from the fagged out noir cycle. The story could easily have been out of a Warner Brothers drawer with George Raft in the lead. The performances are routine, the direction flat, and even the set dressing perfunctory. (An alley is shown by a single plaster wall of simulated brick. It has one poster on it. The poster says, "Post No Bills.") We are introduced to the story and some of the characters by a portentous narrator who informs us that, while most unions work hard and honestly to advance the causes of their members, a few are corrupt. But we don't really get to know much about the unions or how they operate, although I suppose they were fair game after the success of "On the Waterfront" a few years earlier. Here they're just a peg to hang the tale on. The real ring leader is a disbarred lawyer who runs things through three or four thugs. The District Attorney (or whatever he is) finds out, like Dana Andrews did in "Boomerang," that the wrong man (Dick Foran) is charged with a murder and he spends the rest of the film almost alone, digging up evidence of Foran's innocence. He gets into fist fights and shoot outs like any inexpensive movie private eye.Brian Keith is the D.A. He's shown some insinuating displays of talent elsewhere, but here he spends most of the time speaking quietly and staring at the floor. Elisha Cook, Jr., is a likable rummy but can't do a good drunk. Beverley Garland is okay but is undermined by the direction, which has her gawking in a night club when she should be furtive. The remainder of the cast would be suitable for a TV series.And nobody is helped by the writing. When a "B girl" is about to be shipped by the union mob to the Filippines, someone advises her that she only has to learn a few words of Spanish. "I only know one word," she says, "Si. Yes." The writers have not trusted the audience to know that "si" in Spanish means "yes." The plot is clumsy and has holes in it. Keith visits a witness in her flat over a night club. He enters the door and has a gun shoved in his back by a yegg, but he outwits the heavy and knocks him out. Then the orders someone to call the police. The rest of the scene, played out at some length in the night club downstairs, forgets all about the police and they never show up, nor are they expected by anyone.It's nothing to be ashamed of, and some people might enjoy it, but there is similar stuff, better done, elsewhere.