TrueHello
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.
BelSports
This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.
Kimball
Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
Benedito Dias Rodrigues
Some picture pre-war and after-war in Hollywood have this problem the Ultra-nationalism and damage the movie,here have Humphrey Bogart before became a star in a role of an American who loose your job's position for a stranger...so he joint a kind of gang called black legion taking he to help to pressing people and even committing murder to clean up the way for native American workers..l don't know if it was happened or it was one more a political movie propaganda from the 30'
Spuzzlightyear
Oddball curio made more oddball by the fact Humphrey Bogart is in this. Well, OK, it was early in Bogie's career, but still, mighty strange. A regular schmo is passed over for a foreman position he wants, he makes some talk about how all the American jobs are being given to foreigners. Schmo is then talked into joining a secret society to eradicate the foreigners from town! They're wearing flowing robes with hooded masks with skulls on them! But wait! They're not the Klan! They're the BLACK LEGION! Once more, it's being run by the underworld to take advantage of dumb schmos! So yeah, this one is pretty strange. Humphrey Bogart as Joe Schmoe adds to the strangeness (and makes this a bit of a guilty pleasure). See it if you can!
drystyx
Okay, so Bogie is great at everything, but what is he absolutely the best at? Here, we have a story about a group called THE BLACK LEGION, but clearly implied is that it is the KU KLUX KLAN.It is a well written account about how a very ordinary man is swept up into the group. We see hordes of men clinging to the safety of the group. When in the lynch mob, they become different.We see the man's life torn apart, but also the lives of those around him who just want to make their lives, and the lives of others a better place.We are given lots of views of what is taking place in this drama. The drama is full of action, too. It isn't the Macbeth like horror, but the more realistic, every day horror that is depicted, and how it gets out of hand.And that brings us to what Bogie does best. Like the Sierra Madre and other Bogie classics, he is the absolute best at giving us the villain with insecurities, the "realistic" villain, who we see fighting within himself. Much of this is clever writing, also. But it's hard not to think much of it is the genius of Bogart.Obivously a top film, and still as entertaining and interesting today as it was then.
dougdoepke
The row of hooded men lined up execution style is a scary scene that spreads through the movie as a whole. The result is a rather obvious but still hard-hitting political drama from the Depression era studio of record, Warner Bros. No need to repeat the familiar plot. The movie is really a reflection on proto-fascism and not on the Depression or economic crisis since these broader contexts are never even mentioned. Nor is the hot 1930's topic of union organizing mentioned, surprising for a movie that deals with an industrial workforce of machine operators. I suppose these omissions are intended to keep the focus tightly on one particular response to the bad times of 1936, namely right-wing extremism.Within that tight framework, the movie does a good job of showing the appeal of a Black Legion. Frank (Bogart) amounts to an every-man. He wants the prestige and advantages of a better job that he's promised his family and believes he's most qualified for. When immigrant Dombrowski gets the promotion instead, Frank suffers deep humiliation making him vulnerable to Legion propaganda that blames foreigners, like Dombrowski, for taking good "American" jobs. I expect the message resonated among distressed audiences of the time, and still does in our own time.I also like the way the stereotypes become smoother and more attractive as we're introduced to the Legion's top people. Note how the business types are as much concerned with the organization's money-making as they are with its politics—an easily over-looked aspect. Also, the women divide into two familiar categories— either the virtuous wife&mother type (O'Brien & Sheridan) or the promiscuous trampy type (Flint). Both types in this pre-feminist era are portrayed as pretty much dependent on the men in their lives. Thus, the men carry an especially heavy responsibility making them more vulnerable to appeals.As the beleaguered machinist, husband and father, Bogart shows a range of surprisingly vulnerable emotions, unlike the hardened cynic roles he specialized in as an icon. Nonetheless, he's quite good in a difficult part. I especially like the ending that refuses to compromise, though I'm not sure how effective the judge's abstract appeal to American values is in countering the more visceral proto-fascist appeal. Anyway, the movie is definitely underrated and deserves to be pulled out of obscurity for its tough-minded approach to a surprisingly topical message.
