Simply A Masterpiece

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Parolee John Eager (Robert Taylor) has everybody fooled that he's gone straight and is trying to make an honest living as a taxi driver. In reality, Eager hasn't given up his criminal life at all. He's still a racketeer and he's working to open up a new dog track but is finding opposition from a vigilant district attorney (Edward Arnold). Eager starts dating pretty society girl Lisbeth (Lana Turner). When he finds out she's the stepdaughter of the D.A., he tries to use his relationship with Lisbeth as leverage against her stepfather.Glossy crime drama from MGM with some film noir touches. Love the dialogue and the cast is terrific. This is one of my favorite Robert Taylor performances. Far more enjoyable to me than all of those sappy romantic melodramas from the '30s. Edward Arnold, of course, can do no wrong. Lana Turner looks gorgeous (no surprise) and does fine in a role that requires little from her but to be a naive lovestruck young woman. Van Heflin plays Taylor's cynical alcoholic friend who has many of the movie's best lines. He's the scene stealer in this, by the way, and deservedly won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. As with any old movie where there's a close male friendship, many reviewers read into it things that may or may not have been intended. Watch it and decide for yourself. The rest of the cast is full of great actors. Just take a gander at the cast list for this and you'll see how much talent was involved here. It's really a quality movie with a solid script, good characters, and a powerful ending.

A fabulous cast, a brilliant screenplay, and a truly dynamic pairing really create TNT here, Taylor and Turner as beautiful a couple as could possibly be on screen during the golden age of cinema. Even in spite of their age difference, Robert and Lana spark,e and this is a single pairing that even outdid Lana's four films with that dear Mr. Gable. Robert Taylor is a parolee, and she is the daughter of one of the prosecutors (Edward Arnold) who sent him up the river. Taylor is obviously not done with the shady life, and Arnold is out to expose the corruption involving Taylor and a dog track he is preparing to open while living the seemingly honest life of a cab driver.Van Heflin deservedly won the Oscar as the drunken philosopher who is the heart and soul of the film, dying inside due to his consumption, but still filled with the truth of life in spite of that addiction. You get the impression that this idealistic drunkard imbibes because he is disgusted with a world that is beyond his comprehension. In fact, the drunker he is, the more in tuned with his wisdom he is, showing how deceptive alcohol can be when it makes you open your eyes metaphysically while closing them physically.There's a great supporting cast with characters who sparkle with cynicism and hardness. Taylor's young niece is all young lady on the surface, suddenly exploding in rough talk out of nowhere. The character of Turner's fellow sociology student partner is also amusing as she constantly keeps inserting her foot into her mouth. Former Warner Brothers "B" star Glenda Farrell has a cameo as an old acquaintance of Taylor's whose desire for help from him has an ironic connection with the finale. Patricia Dane, as Taylor's obvious mistress hysterically mispronounces "Herod Agrippa" and does not remotely display a "heart of gold" underneath film characters like this usually later reveal.Edward Arnold also is winning as Turner's father who finds himself the victim of blackmail thanks to a vicious game Taylor uses her in, showing a disgust with both Taylor and himself as he goes against his own moral code to protect his daughter. Ultimately, the film surrounds the heat between Taylor and Turner which explodes in a scene where Turner falsely believes herself to have impulsively committed murder. This is a speedy film that is a preliminary to the growing genre of film noir, not as dark as those to follow within two years,but utilizing the same types of camera shots and tough dialog that was on the verge of taking over the screen. The fact that pretty people are not leaving a really pretty situation makes this noir enough for me, and one that remains a classic to this day.

Robert Taylor as Johnny Eager, gangster/criminal/racketeer, has done his time and turned over a new leaf. Or, so his parole officer thinks so. On one of his surprise visits to Johnny's place of residence to make sure he's following the straight and narrow, the parole officer shows up with two sociology students, played by Diana Lewis (who would later marry William Powell in real life) and Lana Turner, who are there "to see how the other half lives." What happens after that was "TNT," as the MGM publicity posters said. Taylor 'n' Turner make love to the screen and bother each other so much they make Romeo and Juliet seem like toddlers. Their chemistry is enough to make the viewer want to smoke. If you want a scintillating, involving, and very intelligent crime drama with great performances by all, including character actors Edward Arnold, Robert Sterling, Barry Nelson, Paul Stewart, Glenda Farrell, and Van Heflin, in his Oscar-winning role as Johnny's literature-spouting best friend. ("'Cause even Johnny Eager needs one friend.") This is definitely one of the best of the old-fashioned crime dramas and one that shouldn't be missed.

Former crime boss John 'Johnny' Eager (Robert Taylor) is out of jail and now content to have a job as a taxi driver, he's good humoured about the good old days when he had flash suits and fast cars and he tells his parole officer this every time he checks in. The district attorney's daughter Liz (Lana Turner) drops in on the parole officer to see how things are run there, she takes a fancy to Johnny who is just leaving and asks to be introduced. Liz soon finds out that Johnny isn't as clean as he makes out and he is still running his crooked business from the local race track. They hit it off, but to protect himself from her father, Johnny sets up a fake murder in his office, committed by Liz, so that she can never report him. Decent thriller, high on melodrama, so not particularly Noirish, Taylor is very watchable as the nice guy Johnny, a pleasant romantic character, but he is a little stretched as bad guy Johnny, Van Heflin steals the show as the romantic, poetry and prose spouting friend and sidekick Jeff Hartnett, who takes Johnny's abuse in order to be supplied with alcohol for which he deservedly won an Oscar.