At the heart of this detective story is a nice little bit of intrigue, complete with murder and a shady double cross. Unfortunately, it takes too long to get there. Pace isn't so much the issue per se, it's more the plot, which is rather dull in all of its prologue. Among other things, you'd probably never know this was a pre-Code film. The film even fast forwards itself a couple of times to keep itself to 66 minutes, simply showing major plot developments in newspaper articles. William Powell elevates everything he's in and there's no exception here, but the star of this show was Margaret Lindsay, who brought cool sophistication and toughness to the part of a society woman who is lucky at the roulette table. Pretty cool that she was empowered enough to pop the question at the end too. I also liked Ruth Donnelly and Natalie Moorhead here, who liven things up when they're on the screen.
Review of Private Detective 62
