6/10
The Falcon Takes Over
12 August 2020
Gay Lawrence becomes involved with an escaped convict named Moose Malloy, who is looking for his girlfriend.

The Falcon Takes Over is a stale rehash of Raymond Chandler's Farewell My Lovely, later re-filmed by RKO in 1944 as Murder, My Sweet. The Falcon takes the place of Philip Marlowe, but this causes plot inconsistencies, such as why the Falcon decides to turn private detective halfway through the film. The script is muddled, mainly due to the fact that they valiantly tried to compress Chandler's 300 page novel into 65 minutes.

This was the first of the George Sanders Falcon's I've seen, and I have to say, I much preferred Tom Conway. Sanders is an actor I quite like, and he's great playing cads, but he's just not as good as his brother as the Falcon. The rest of the cast is alright, with the standouts being Lynn Bari and Helen Gilbert. Hans Conreid has a good bit part.

James Gleason gives a surprisingly bad performance as the police inspector, while Allen Jenkins is this film's Goldie Locke. Ward Bond really overdoes his performance as Malloy; Mike Mazurki was much better in the '44 version.

Overall, this is by far my least favorite of the series that I've seen.
1 out of 1 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Recently Viewed