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DVD The Enforcer
Humphrey Bogart stars as a crusading district attorney working against the clock to prosecute a mob boss in this suspenseful picture that should appeal to crime completists and fans of the iconic actor. Based on actual court cases, the plot unfolds largely in flashback as Bogart reviews his case against vicious racketeer Everett Sloane, who has killed off anyone that has threatened to testify against him. Capably directed by Bretaigne Windust (with uncredited help from Raoul Walsh, who shot most of the film's most suspenseful moments, including the nail-biting conclusion), The Enforcer's standard law vs. the mob plotline benefits greatly from its unusual structure, as well as Bogart's solid presence and a terrific supporting cast, which includes an early turn by Zero Mostel. The opening narration is provided by Estes Kefauver, who was chairing a Senate investigation into organized crime at the time of the picture's release. --Paul Gaita
Stark sets, simple dialogue and a straight-forward plot help Bogart dominate this crime film. Every gesture, from his face to his hands, and the way he walks, and every word he says, makes an even bigger impression against this minimalistic backdrop.
The sets at the start are immensely black with long shadows in the dead of night. But as the film progresses and light is let in, through city and through country, things open up. It's a gritty world of immigrants and the unfortunate fear of people with names like Mendoza and Olga.
The character actors do memorable things with their lines and there is a more than effective use of flashbacks in the plot.
The music of a Romantic European orchestra, all heavy with strings and blaring brass, once again adds to a Bogart movie.
This may all seem rather tame and simple-minded to viewers raised on more recent crime films. But I find these old black-and-white pictures by Bogie and Cagney to be perfect in their own way.
Their "unrealistic realism" is less cluttered, more like art, but not pretentiously so. And they show an understanding of human nature, especially violence and the allure of the gun, which later films lack.
More than anything, this film has the greatest screen presence of them all, the dominating force that was Humphrey Bogart.
Good crime thriller
This is a decent thriller circa 1950 with Bogart in the role of DA for the jurisdiction. Well acted with a decent script it delivers. With language such as "hit" and "contract" now commonplace in the action/thriller genre it's a little odd to hear them used as if they were new term (and they were then).
The story centers around the breaking of a crime syndicate whose work consists of murder for hire. Much of it is told in flashback with few flagging moments. This isn't Bogart's best, but you won't be disappointed. This is a water-down version of a real life event based in the mid-40's in NY City. Another film, Murder, Inc with Peter Falk is a grittier tale of the same incident.
Look for Zero Mostel in a supporting role and for the work of Raoul Walsh who has several uncredited directing scenes.
A Huge Bogart Fan...couldn't watch the whole thing.
The plot drags. Bogart is magnetic, but seems bored, and the film tries to milk his presence instead of working the plotline or magnifying the other characters.
I actually turned it off, and I love to watch Bogart films.
Yes, it's true: you can virtually see Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall falling for each other in this Howard Hawks variation on Casablanca but adapted from--as legend has it--Ernest Hemingway's self-declared "worst novel." (The story goes that Hawks told Hemingway he could make a movie of the author's least work, and Hemingway gave him the rights to this story.) The script by William Faulkner and Jules Furthman actually makes this one of Hawks's and Bogart's most interesting and often exciting films. Bogart plays a boat captain who reluctantly agrees to help the French Resistance while wooing chanteuse Bacall. Hoagy Carmichael, wry at the piano, adds a delicious accent to an already wonderful mood. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Humphrey Bogart - Lauren Bacall Director(s): Howard Hawks DVD Release Date: Released the 04 November 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This gimmicky film noir stars Humphrey Bogart as an escaped criminal who undergoes plastic surgery and holes up at the home of Lauren Bacall's character while healing and preparing to prove his innocence. If you can last through the first half-hour of this thing--which is shot entirely from the subjective view of Bogart's bandaged face, which we don't see until later--you might find ample reason in the stars' performances to stick around for the conclusion. But director Delmer Daves (A Summer Place) tests a viewer's endurance with such an obvious, attention-getting ploy. The least of the Bogart-Bacall vehicles (The Big Sleep,To Have and Have Not, Key Largo). --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Humphrey Bogart - Lauren Bacall Director(s): Delmer Daves DVD Release Date: Released the 04 November 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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By turns hard-nosed and ribald, They Drive by Night smashes through a vintage Warner Bros. yarn about truck drivers, the Depression, and one duplicitous dame. The opening reels are a forceful look at the dangerous lives of independent truckers (George Raft and Humphrey Bogart as brothers--Bogie in the supporting role, though he would soon eclipse Raft in Hollywood), battling the system and the economy. The final section veers into a less exciting murder frame-up, but Ida Lupino is so delicious as the Black Widow, it works. The robust humor of director Raoul Walsh dominates the film, with some truly hilarious double entendres aimed at outfoxing the censors. At the center of many such one-liners is Ann Sheridan, as a waitress who slings more than hash. It's close to being a classic,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): George Raft - Humphrey Bogart Director(s): Raoul Walsh DVD Release Date: Released the 04 November 2003 Usually ships within 24 hours
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This 1941 melodrama is memorable for both its strong central performances and their intimations of how the previous decade's crime dramas would evolve into film noir--no accident, given the solid direction of veteran Raoul Walsh and the hand of screenwriter John Huston, who teamed with the author of its novelistic source, W.R. Burnett (Little Caesar). In the central character of Roy "Mad Dog" Earle, a fictional peer to John Dillinger, Humphrey Bogart finds a defining role that anticipates the underlying fatalism and moral ambiguity visible in the career-making roles soon to follow, including Sam Spade in Huston's directorial debut, The Maltese Falcon.
Earle suggests a prescient variation on the enraged sociopaths that were fixtures of the gangster melodramas that shaped... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Ida Lupino - Humphrey Bogart Director(s): Raoul Walsh DVD Release Date: Released the 04 November 2003 Usually ships within 24 hours
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It's hard to imagine nowadays that someone so innately bitter and cynical as Humphrey Bogart could be a major movie star--but he was, and the movies were richer for it. In Tokyo Joe, Bogart plays an Air Force colonel who returns to Tokyo after World War II to reclaim a nightclub he'd had to abandon. When he discovers that his former lover, a Russian refugee, is still alive and now married, he sets out to win her back--but in the process gets drawn into a fraudulent air freight scheme that may endanger the stability of post-war Japan, as well as a child he never knew he had. Tokyo Joe isn't a classic, but when the camera catches the lightning in Bogart's eyes or his calm voice twists into a snarl, it's a powerful jolt. His dark persona makes his virtuous acts all... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Humphrey Bogart - Alexander Knox Director(s): Stuart Heisler DVD Release Date: Released the 10 February 2004 Usually ships within 24 hours
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