Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Movie review - "Loan Shark" (1952) **

Unpretentious, inoffensive (well apart from one scene) low budget B movie made at a time when that species was migrating to TV. George Raft is looking pretty old and still hasn't really learned how to act but is a good tough guy and ideally cast as a man who gets out of prison (wasn't his fault - hit someone who conked their head and died). He visits his sister whose husband is sticking up to lean sharks and winds up dead. Raft goes undercover to investigate.

The crooks are a bit dumb to believe Raft, who is the brother in law of someone they just killed, is one of them - maybe it would've been better had they not known. I guess some of the crooks are suspicious. The support cast are pretty good especially Paul Stewart, with his sunken eyes and seemingly tobacco stained face.

The dodgy bit is Raft's romance with a secretary - he forces himself on her and she kind of likes it. There's a bit of an age gap.

Fresh handling - some good action sequences and I wish there'd been more of them. This is no classic, not a major B movie but it's tight and quick.

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