Remarkable pre-Code film from MGM which blew my socks off. It came about apparently because Herbert Hoover was upset at all the movies glamorising gangsters as opposed to police, so he had a word to good friend Louis B Mayer and this was the result. It’s a really energetic, exciting, cynical film – the camera really moves around. I'd never heard of the director, Charles Brabin - he was at the end of a long career, and married Theda Bara - but he does an excellent job.
Walter Huston stars is a crusading cop battling gangsters (Jean Hersholt) and a crooked system, including terrified jurors, shonky lawyers, slack politicians, corrupt bosses. He's a devoted family man (a wife and a massive brood) so it's hard for him when his cop brother (Wallace Ford) becomes corrupted by a gangster's moll (Jean Harlow).
Harlow gives the best performance in her career to date here - sexy, funny, trashy. She tells Ford it’s alright being hurt “sometimes… if it’s done in the right spirit.” Huston is a good, tough hero. The film has a remarkable finale where he becomes so frustrated by the gangsters getting off that he gathers all his cop mates around, turns up at a gangster dinner - and they shoot them. And the gangsters shoot back - and there's this massive fight where most of the cast end up dead, including Harlow, Ford, and Huston. This, after we've seen Huston's family. It's fantastic! (So much so you don't mind it's kind of silly for the cops just to rock up, stand in a straight line and fire. At least the gangsters try to duck for cover behind tables but the cops don't.)
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