saturno3x1 This is a very good film. It got me thrilled from the very beginning. The story starts when the main witness on a murder trial falls to death accidentally just the night before the trial, and then the District Attorney begins to review all the case over, seeking some other conviction clue against the defendant. From then on, all the movie is made of flashbacks which tell you (not always in chronological order) the whole police investigation that has been carried out to break up that crime organization.The keys: Actually this is not a Bogie's film, for he doesn't play an important part in the action: Most of the time, he just listens to what others do. In fact, this is nobody's film, for the play is quite well distributed between the characters. And the director has been clever enough to give each one of the players quite enough a part to describe his/her character perfectly.The details: There are a lot of details in the action, on which I didn't realize the first 4 or 5 times I saw the movie. But after seeing it a dozen times (believe it or not), I enjoy every one of them. For example, try to understand why Ricco's hand was slipping when Ferguson tried to grab it. Or guess whatever happened to Vince. Or what is the thing "you can carry around in the hat", as Mendoza said. Or just ask yourself why Rico was such a good employer for his employees: paying without having them work, providing lawyers, taking care of their families...The moral: I even try to figure out if there is a moral conclusion laying under the plot. Maybe there is one, if one comes to analyze the murderers characters: All of them seem quite tough when they have a gun, but they break down when feeling threatened (even the impassive and cool Mendoza), revealing themselves as a bunch of cowards. And there is another important fact: In the end, NO ONE GOT TO ESCAPE. Up to eight of them end up violently killed, and the other five regret (or seem to) and agree to collaborate with the police.The goofs: Unfortunately there are plenty of goofs in the action: Olga Kirshen talks too much, same as Angela Vetto; Big Babe hides in the church, as if it were a safe place to hide from murderers; Angela assumes Teresa's personality in a way which is not credible; Rico knocks poor Whitlow's head over the washbasin without Ferguson nor Nelson hearing it, although they are in the room next door; The apparent lack of impeachments for disappearing people in all those years of murders... Still, that doesn't harm the plot that much.Although not quite realistic, the acting (Ted De Corsia at his best), the plot and the direction make a thrilling picture which worths a view... well, more than one view.

secondtake The Enforcer (1951)Humphrey Bogart makes this film, and if you like him, you'll love this. If you don't know or care about Bogart, you'll see what he's all about here. The rest of the film is good, very good, but it's standard fare. And it has a few moments of just incredulous stuff, like toward the beginning when they are protecting a key witness and they ignore the obvious problem of having the witness sit in front of a window across from a hotel. Naturally, a sniper takes a shot at him. I won't say whether he succeeds, but it sets you up to be suspicious of the director and writer from there on.But there's Bogie, the relentless investigator. He needs to put a terrible crime boss in the chair, and sets off to find proof against him, running up against mobsters who seem to be one step ahead, covering up or wiping out (with bullets) anything or anyone who might know something. It's good stuff, but not great stuff. Director Bretaigne Windust had done some Broadway and a couple of films, but he doesn't pull this together. I'm surprised a Bogart film at the top of his career was handled by Windust, but at this time Bogart had been battling the Hollywood Communist lists and blacklists, and he got his independent Santana production company going, and I'm guessing that he was working against a lot of the Hollywood mainstream at this point (as was John Huston, who used Bogart in "African Queen" the next year). But this is Bogart at his best, really, just after "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and "In a Lonely Place." The photography is first rate (Robert Burks was by this point doing a whole bunch of Hitchcock films, too). In all, a decent, well made if unexceptional film.

derekcreedon Towards the end of 1951 I turned fifteen, just a year away from legal admittance to an X-film. The new certificate, recently introduced, posed an unwelcome obstruction and a moral challenge though I had few problems at my local 'fleapit' where they didn't always question you. Joe Losey's version of M, Cy Endfield's THE SOUND OF FURY and Russell Rouse's THE WELL were stark compelling studies of civil unrest accentuated by the guilty thrill of the 'forbidden' logo. Up the road at the 'de-luxe' however was a different proposition. Amid much larger, grander and more formal surroundings my soul shrank at thoughts of confrontation, of deceptiveness, of "trouble on the door". Sheer funk kept me away from DETECTIVE STORY even with Kirk Douglas in the lead and I let Brando and STREETCAR rattle by unhailed. But then came the crunch, a moment of truth - Humphrey Bogart in MURDER INC. (as it was known over here). What self-respecting film-nut could let that one get away without a struggle. With a grace under pressure Bogie would have endorsed I faced the big guns - the old commissionaire, the manager, the Lord Lieutenant of Glamorgan, the lot. "What school do you go to ? What form are you in ? And you're 16 ??" I felt like one of the Bowery Boys in night-court. All I wanted was to see the Main Man in action, not study for a life of crime. Hang in there, Bogie, don't start without me. They finally let me in though I don't think they believed me and it was worth every bead of sweat. It was a shock to see Bogie with an X pinned to his lapel but what went on was rather alarming...It's an odd item in his chronology, a superior B-picture made apparently to wrap up his Warner contract. Relations with the studio that had made him a star (via some lucky accidents) had long been deteriorating and he was already making films for his own company through a deal with Columbia. As the Assistant D.A. doggedly trying to nail a reptilian crime-boss he was not so much the star here as the host, presiding over a series of flashback sequences before taking over command of the climax. He has no romantic interest (all the women in the film are small-part victims) and no 'personal' story is allowed for. His chief sidekick is a burly Police Captain (Roy Roberts), in effect a precursor of all the TV cop-shows waiting in the wings. The Bogart-link reminds us of his Thirties thrillers but there are no flashy nightclubs here, no wise-cracking molls, no cocky chipmunks fighting for territory. The hoods are murky and nervous in an atmosphere of dread akin to a horror-film which suffuses the whole piece. (It certainly felt like an X at the time). A slickly-wrought compression based on real events it introduced the business of "contract-killing" to the screen and never loses its grip. As others have noted it employs a CITIZEN KANE device - the hunt for a vital clue embedded in the past which may hopefully bring about closure and its nicely apt that Everett Sloane (as Mr. Big) appears in both films.The more extreme violence is always off-screen, no bad thing, but we do get a splendidly-prepared shoot-out at the end when the D.A. rescues his crucial witness (marvellously etched by Pat Joiner) from a stalking hit-man. Real-life D.As probably don't do that sort of thing but this is Bogie going gat-for-gat against Bob Steele, his old adversary from THE BIG SLEEP. It works perfectly and whatever the studio politics that led to it it's a smashing send-off.

classicsoncall You won't hear "The Enforcer" mentioned when it comes to Humphrey Bogart's body of famous work, but it's a very watchable mystery that pulls you in early, and keeps you interested with each new revelation. Bogie's character is Assistant District Attorney Martin Ferguson, who along with police pal Frank Nelson (Roy Roberts), unravels a murder for profit enterprise in a deftly told story with a clever twist that finally sinks the big fish behind it.Like the Charlie Chan films of an earlier era, I found that keeping a scorecard for the colorful cast of characters is helpful to keep track of the action. You've got names like Big Babe, Philadelphia Tom, Smiley, Sad Eyes and Duke Molloy to keep track of, all as the story unfolds in a flashback within a flashback framework. One of the more interesting things for me in this 1950 film was it's explanation of the terms "contract" and "hit", obviously recent additions to the crime lexicon for it's day, though hardly unknown today.The movie offers a lot of clichéd lines that were probably fresh at the time, take Ferguson's command to the paranoid Rico (Ted De Corsia) the day before he's set to testify against mob boss Mendoza (Everett Sloane) - "He'll die, he's got to die, and you're going to kill him." Though Rico dies in a fall while trying to escape from testifying, we later see him in a flashback scene recounting how he was present at Mendoza's first "hit" of a café owner. Apparently, Mendoza's murder for hire racket had quite a few customers; when Ferguson has the authorities dredge a swamp where a couple victims were expected to be found, they wound up with an evidence room table filled with the shoes of his victims. That was one of the credibility defying scenes that seemed a little over the top, even though done in understated fashion.With only a few hours to find a way to put Mendoza away for good, Ferguson strains his memory for a possible clue that may have been largely ignored when Rico initially gave himself up. I think they had a song for it - "Don't it make your brown eyes blue".If you can get your hands on this little gem, give it a try. One of Bogie's last films, it holds up well, even though certain elements mentioned earlier mark it as a period piece. For all that, it offers a capable cast that delivers it's story well, amid dingy interrogation rooms and sordid back alleys. Have fun!