He’s top man in a mid-sized MidWestern city, country clubber, pal to reporters, politicos & the police force, a respectable chamber-of-commerce type. So what if his income stems from gaming rackets: backroom horse betting parlors, fancy gambling dens, the local ‘numbers’ runners. But when a teenage kid is shot by the police while robbing a store to cover his out-of-control gambling debts, town favorite becomes town pariah. Worse, the big boys from Chicago & New York, the guys who run the wire service from the race tracks, are putting the squeeze on just as his straight-arrow son comes home from college. Easy to imagine Warners tackling this in ‘33*, a slick study in hubris laid low for Warren William, Eddie G. Robinson or Paul Muni, depending on the budget. With plenty of suspense, action, courtroom drama and loads of contract players in stylish support. Twenty years on, the old Warners moxie is in short supply. Frank Lovejoy makes an honest, but unexciting lead and, with few exceptions, the rest of the acting miserable, with journeyman director Lewis Seiler phoning it in. The only system on display in THE SYSTEM, is the Hollywood System in post-WWII free fall.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *Over @ M-G-M, producer Arthur Freed, scripter Richard Brooks & director Mervyn LeRoy (just the guy for this in his 1933 Warner Bros. prime) brought off something awfully similar, still showing some pride in the craft, in ANY NUMBER CAN PLAY/’49.
No comments:
Post a Comment