marcslope
This early Warners social-consciousness riff raises several serious and still-timely issues: racketeering, price-fixing, corruption. And it has a great leading man in Walter Huston, here a racketeer who tries to reform to please his long-unseen daughter, Loretta Young, and become respectable enough to allow her marriage to nice, prestigious-but-broke David Manners, who plays, get this, one Dick Cheney. There's a gallery of interesting characters--Willard Robertson as a revenge-seeking businessman wronged by Huston's trust, Dudley Digges as Huston's utterly humorless second-in-command, Doris Kenyon as a socialite who's against all Huston's principles yet persuasively befriends him. This, and some other hard-to-believe plot twists, are pulled off pretty well, and Huston's as superb as usual. But it all builds to a tense climax that simply can't resolve itself satisfactorily. We want Young and Manners to end up together, and we want Huston to end happily. There's no way for both to happen, and the final image, that of a grocer lowering his prices again now that the racket's been busted, is supposed to suffice as a happy ending. Too much has preceded it, and we're left feeling unsatisfied. Still worth watching, certainly, as evidence of Warners' interest in tackling tough issues in its early talkies, and for Huston's expertise and Young's loveliness (she's good here, too). But I still felt cheated.
MartinHafer
Wow, did this movie start with a bang! There is a "businessmen's association" that offers protection for its members. This is actually a very thinly veiled cover for the mob. A business man is told he CAN'T do business with someone outside the organization. When he does, the consequences actually shocked me--the mob REAAALLY meant what they said! The head of this group of crooks is the well-dressed and well-mannered Walter Huston and when he's behind closed doors with his thugs, he instantly loses his sweet veneer. But to everyone outside this group, he's a respectable and well off gentleman. Even his well-bred daughter (Loretta Young) doesn't know--and it was easier to hide it from her as he had her educated in Europe. But, when he makes the mistake and tells her about his real business, she wants nothing to do with him and leaves to start a life on her own. She even goes so far as tell her fiancé, Dick Cheney (yes, that really is the character's name) that she cannot marry him--though I have no idea why she goes this far. Naturally, Dick won't hear of this and pursues her ardently.There's a lot more to the story than this, but sadly it never really amounted to very much. Huston got sick of the business and wanted to get out, but oddly, there was very little suspense or action--despite the action early in the film. And, oddly, Huston and Young reunited awfully easily. There WAS a shooting that occurred a bit later--but that occurred off-camera and the entire affair was amazingly muted and dull despite such a promising start. Overall, it turned out to be an amazingly tame dud.
David (Handlinghandel)
As he is in "Night Court," Walter Huston is superb in this harsh early mob story. Some might think his change of heart over daughter Loretta Young sentimental but not I. It is psychologically plausible and doesn't sell out the rough nature of the story. Not much ends happily, though the path for Young and David Manners -- a highly improbable couple -- does clear.Huston is probably best known for "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre." To me, he is first and foremost the fine American businessman in the lovely "Dodsworth." He was very convincing in these earlier unsympathetic roles, though. This movie pulls no punches and has some scary scenes. It doesn't seem at all dated. It could have been made 70 years later -- but teenagers wouldn't be interested so it wouldn't have been.
boblipton
A potentially interesting entry in Warner Brothers' series of crime dramas is weakened by an improbably wordy script, stagey performances -- Walter Huston, in this early role, seems to have no sense of where the camera is -- and an outright awful performance by Doris Kenyon, who, although fifth-billed, is actually the female lead.Despite the ethnic types that inhabit the better Warners crime dramas, the Irishmen and Italians, this one seems to be inhabited solely by WASPS who wear impeccable, old fashioned clothing.On the plus side, Loretta Young is in her luminously beautiful phase, an absolute pleasure to look at, although she isn't given much to do. David Manners is adequate as the juvenile lead and the idea of the story, how honest men can be driven to become criminals, is potentially interesting. But this movie doesn't live up to its potential.
AD
