utgard14
Pharmacist Charles Farrell goes into business with gangster Ricardo Cortez making counterfeit toothpaste and cosmetics. Soon Cortez wants to branch out into making medication, which Farrell isn't happy about. But Farrell wants to marry fiancée Bette Davis and give her financial security. Early Bette flick before she had really developed her style. She's fine but there's not a lot for her to do through most of the picture but worry about her guy. Charles Farrell is OK. Ricardo Cortez is a great bad guy as usual. Nice supporting cast includes Glenda Farrell, Allen Jenkins, and Henry O'Neill. Fun cat fight between Glenda Farrell and Renee Whitney. Exciting climax you will not be able to predict!
LeonLouisRicci
This is an Odd one to say the Least. Now that Prohibition has been Repealed Bootleggers get into the Fake Cosmetic and Drug Business. Making Generic and Ineffective Products and Slapping Brand Names on the Labels.There are Scenes that are Downright Bizarre, like a Row of Gangsters Brushing Their Teeth, a Jewish Teenager who keeps a Ledger and Wisecracks about Sales Tax, a Mother Buying Cough Syrup "for her child", "don't wrap it up I'll drink it, I mean carry it that way." A Cat Fight with some Slang Banter that is Priceless, a Miscarriage, a Brutal Torture Scene, and some Moralizing in the End that is so Over the Top it Defies Dramatic License, and there are Others.Bette Davis Fans can Check this out to see why She was so Disgusted with Light Weight Roles like this that She Fled to England. She Looks Beautiful here but doesn't have much to do. The Film is Worth a Watch for its Strangeness but not much Else. There is a lot of Drug Talk and Pre-Code References to Coke (the drug not the drink) but Nothing Racy or Raunchy.
e_imdb-64
Although this is typical of the low-budget quickies that Warners churned out like hotcakes in the Thirties it offers Bette Davis in her most youthfully appealing "down-to-earth platinum blonde girl" phase. You can find the same character in THREE ON A MATCH, THE GIRL FROM 10TH AVENUE, THE PETRIFIED FOREST and others. She exudes an innocent but intelligent, unaffected femininity that seems to have evaporated by the time she hit her stride with JEZEBEL, so it's good that this phase of her career is preserved - if only to track her evolution as an actress. Note the energy and vitality she injects (perhaps effortlessly) into a supporting role as the girlfriend-wife, stealing every scene she's in - without relying on conventional beauty. It's kind of fun also to see how the scenarists managed to leap from one implausible, contrived plot development to the next - but that's a secondary matter because most of these films were beyond belief. The point was to make a moral point, not to be narratively convincing. The point here being: evil gangsters, beware of the authorities because they'll get you!
nycritic
An interesting but ultimately average melodrama where manufacturers of counterfeit medicinal products make an idealistic girl who works at a pharmacy to be the innocent bystander who pays the price. This was the sort of ultra-gritty movies that Warner Bros. was churning out a mile a minute, and for the lack of gloss and nifty cinematic presentation they made up for in droves with the subject matters they took on -- something no one was doing at the time. It's surprising that the Code didn't step in to evaluate this crime-drama, but given the fact that any bad behavior is more or less curtailed and there is an obvious moral to the story, the end-result was this short little B-movie. THE BIG SHAKEDOWN is, as much of the movies of its time from Warners, a bare-bones plot that moves quite rapidly and focuses less on the actors than on getting from point A to point B in breakneck time. Some mildly disturbing scenes involve a vat of hydrochloric acid and a man falling into it, and Bette Davis' rather bland reaction to her character's miscarriage (and her unbelieably swift ability to bounce back, as if nothing had happened). It's a hoot (for me) to watch Glenda Farrell play her usual gangster's moll as she burns a path right down her lines -- the woman definitely had some talent in being able to enunciate just under four hundred words a minute!
AD
