User Reviews

Here are the basics: Judith Maroc is being released from prison after serving a short term for having been her husband Gene's apprentice in a heist. She tells him she wants to divorce him and remarry; he vows to kill anyone who steps into his marital shoes.

Maroc makes good on his promise, escaping from a train while being transported to testify at another mobster's trial. The G-men realize that Maroc will now be after his wife, so they use her as bait to capture the escaped felon.

Now the film turns into a bedroom comedy for a reel or two. When Judith's rich fiancé finds out about her sordid past, he fakes an accident to avoid the wedding. Lee Laird, the head G-man, steps in to take his place at the ceremony and...nudge, nudge, the honeymoon, too. There are several "raised eyebrow" jokes about this situation until Maroc arrives on the scene, abducts his ex, and plans to escape to Cuba. Then we're back in gangster flick mode until the big shoot-'em-up ending at a seedy Florida seaside bar.

It's pretty lightweight fare with lots of laughable spots. For instance, can we believe that a local paper would make a socialite's wedding and honeymoon the headline story? Or that the wedding takes place seemingly without anyone from either family in attendance? Or that a minister, finding out about the ruse, would insist that the phony couple was really married? Pat O'Brien plays the cop (what else?) and Cesar Romero, in a very early performance, is the greasy villain. He's worth watching here, still in his 20s, wiry, and angry, looking nothing like the suave leading man he would eventually become. I watched this a day after seeing LITTLE CAESAR for the first time and laughed at the idea of comparing these two films in the same category as "gangster pictures." This picture is OK viewing if you want some lightweight fare in between your Cagney and Robinson REAL gangster films.

The pretty Margaret Lindsay is the estranged wife of convicted killer Cesar Romero who is bent on keeping an eye on his spouse by making sure that she goes to prison along with him. But thanks to federal agent Pat O'Brien, she avoids a prison sentence and when Romero escapes from prison, O'Brien sets up a phony wedding between himself and Lindsay to entrap Romero. Lindsay ends up being kidnapped by the nasty Romero and hides out in a country dive bar where Romero's gang holds up, leading to a shoot-out when O'Brien locates her. There are some great lines and a few decent character performances, but this seems rushed together too quickly to be fully believable. Lindsay is far too much of a lady to be truly believable as a gangster's moll, although Romero sneers nicely and makes quite a few determined threats to steal the film as the main villain. With that Warner Brothers directness that made them the main studio in the creation of the gangster film, there are many elements that will keep you interested, but when you compare it to "Little Caesar", the original "Public Enemy" and "I Was a Fugitive From a Chain Gang" (and more recently "G-Men"), it seems too implausible in its story telling. Robert Armstrong and Dick Foran add some macho support to the film which, under the direction of Nick Grinde, ends up being only somewhat satisfactory as a bottom of the bill feature that wastes its talented female lead in a role that is truly beneath her.