Cortechba Overrated

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

clanciai The most interesting part of this film is the complicated relationship between the father and the son and how it develops, the father being a widower of an only son without a mother, spoiled as the father is a millionaire and a business man without scruples, which leads him into trouble as he gets dishonoured and jailed for embezzlement, while the son, heretoforth completely honest, is ruined with his father, sees the injustice of his father's treatment and finds his only means to get him exonerated by turning to elements evading the law. Enter Dorothy Lamour who gets him involved, as she is already involved with those alternative elements. It's a great noir, the story is fascinating, the characters never cease to develop, the action is constantly moving forward, and no one can guess what will become of all this confusion of right and wrong, justice and injustice, seeing what is wrong and turning a blind eye to it as it seems right to do wrong, and so on.Edward Arnold is the great character who somewhat overshadows Tyrone Power, but the character that most will stick in your mind is the old pettifogger, Charley Grapewin as Judge Brennan, who quotes Shakespeare and cuts the only truly tragic character. The final scene somewhat spoils the drama, it would have been better without it, but up to that point it's one of the major and most intriguing noirs - and one of the first.

JohnHowardReid Copyright 19 April 1940 by 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. New York opening at the Roxy: 12 April 1940. U.S. release: 19 April 1940. Australian release: 13 June 1940. 8,686 feet. 96 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Bob Cain (Power) leaves college when he learns that his dad (Arnold) has been arrested for embezzlement. Bob vows to work for his release and eventually finds a shyster lawyer, Brennan, (Grapewin), who agrees to take the case.OVERVIEW: In the first of his five films with director Henry Hathaway, Power surprised his fans by playing a gangster… Originally titled Dance with the Devil, the film was to have re-teamed Power with Linda Darnell as Lucky DuBarry. But then Zanuck loaned Don Ameche to Paramount in exchange for Dorothy Lamour. Guess who got the better of that deal! COMMENT: The film is so beautifully photographed, it's always a pleasure to watch and it's enacted by one of the greatest and largest casts ever assembled for a film of this type. There are so many excellent cameo portrayals, each making such a positive, unified yet unobtrusively realistic contribution. Power gives an ingratiating and convincing performance in the title role while Nolan is charmingly and fascinatingly reptilian and Charley Grapewin is a stand-out as the alcoholic shyster. Lionel Atwill is exactly right for the part of a lawyer with a double standard, whilst Marc Lawrence looks and acts the part of a cheap hood perfectly.Also seen to advantage in this line-up of principals is Dorothy Lamour, who even has a couple of right-in-the-mood songs, including a little production number with a wow of a chorus. Pleasingly, she is not always photographed from the most flattering angles, so she looks the part as well as she acts it out.However, Edward Arnold is forced to battle valiantly with a role that is not as well-written as the others. It's a key role, but one occasionally has the impression that it's being built up in order to put Arnold on camera for longer than the dramatic potential of his scenes warrants. On TV, the long, boring, extraneous scene in which Power returns home from college and has a long confrontation with his father is usually cut, as there is no essential information in this scene that is not repeated later on. And for all Arnold's mannerisms, Cain is not nearly as interesting a character as Apollo, or Dwyer, or Brennan — or even Lucky.Hathaway makes imaginative use of natural locations (the camera panning up to catch Power looking over the gallery at the railway station and the shot through the glass door framing Power and Atwill — a characteristic Hathaway touch — as they walk to the entrance) and drives the film along at a fast clip. There are also some characteristic touches of violence (Power bringing down Lawrence with a flying tackle; Nolan slapping Lamour around — this sequence was too much for the Australian censor; Brennan's murder in the steam-room, the more chillingly effective for not being shown directly on camera; the climactic prison break).Hathaway's approach is varied. Occasionally he employs long takes, and has an excellent eye for composition in his establishing long shots — sometimes he holds these for most of the sequence, sometimes he breaks them up with medium close-ups. Usually, he eschews reverse angles (though there are a couple of examples in the film) and he can use mirror shots with dramatic effectiveness. In short, his style is admirably varied and shows his usual deftness and skill.In all, this is vintage Henry Hathaway. The best scenes are those filmed on actual locations and the two action scenes (the murder and the prison break). AVAILABLE on an excellent 20th Century Fox DVD.

sol ***SPOILERS*** Nothing more then an average crime drama with an incredibly schmaltzy ending "Johnny Apollo" is only worth watching because of its all star cast that includes Tyrone Power as both Johnny Apollo, a name he took off a theater marquee, and collage swimming and rowing champ Bobby Cain.It's when Johnny finds out that his dad Wall Street investment giant Robert Cain Sr, Edward Arnold, was indited for embezzling his clients that his entire life turned upside down. Not being able to face his collage classmates in that his father is an indited, and later convicted, crook Johnny drifts from one menial job to another trying to support himself. With the name Cain not helping Johnny, who's at the time known as Robert Cain Jr, to keep a job he changes it to Johnny Apollo and ends up working as a debt collector or muscle man for bad guy mobster Mickey, known as "The Mick", Dwyer played by perennial good guy-in almost all his other movies-Lloyd Nolan.It's when old man Cain, known as Pop's behind bars, finds out that his clean cut collage boy son Robert/Johnny is in fact "In" with the "Mob" that he completely disowns him. This was an odd why of Pop's Cain treating his son Johnny who only got "In" with the "Mob" in order to spring him from behind bars with an early parole. The person that Johnny gets to do the springing is mobbed up shyster lawyer and ex-judge Emmett T. Brenner, Charley Grapewin, who got it through the grapevine, the D.A's office, that he can get Pop's off if his son Johnny turn evidence on his boss "The Mick".The movie gets more and more ridicules as it goes along with "The Mick" getting the lowdown that Brenner is setting him up, but not knowing that his boy Johnny is involved in it, has Brenner iced, with an ice pick no less, while he's drying out, from too much scotch & milk, at a local Turkish Bath. The undoubtedly most bizarre part of the movie is saved for last with "The Mick" and his gang, including Johnny Apollo, indited on a number of fraud and embezzlement counts, just like old man Cain was, and sent up the river, Sing Sing Prison, for some 3 to 5 years."The Mick" who's supposed to be so smart doesn't plan to go on the lamb, together with his gang, but in fact turns himself over to the prison officials in order to break out the very next day! This brainless and cockamamie plan on "The Mick's" part, with Johnny willingly going along with it, even if it succeeds will not only add twenty or more years on his already short 3 to 5 year sentence but may very lead to the death, in an inevitable shoot-out, of a prison guard as well as "The Mick" and the members of his gang themselves!****SPOILERS**** If you have a diabetic condition avoid at all costs the unbearably sugary ending in order not to overdose on it. Johnny and his dad are reunited outside, not in, prison with Johnny's girl Lucky, Dorothy Lamour, "The Mick's" former gun moll who alerted Pop's about the prison breakout-and almost got himself killed in trying to stop it-at Johnny's side as well.

Neil Doyle JOHNNY APOLLO was an early attempt by Fox at film noir, but it pales by comparison with other entries during the busy '40s era of crime melodramas. Part of the fault has to be the story itself, which is highly improbable and full of holes, and the casting of handsome and intelligent TYRONE POWER as the kind of guy who would go into a life of crime because his father landed in jail.EDWARD ARNOLD is his crooked father, LLOYD NOLAN is a crime boss and DOROTHY LAMOUR is the nightclub singer who switches her affection from Nolan to Power as fast as a showgirl changes her costumes. She gets to warble a couple of torch songs rather nicely and looks attractive for all her close-ups, but she's not exactly right for heavy dramatic roles and Paramount would be using her more effectively in those "Road" pictures with Hope and Crosby.The story is pure hokum and nothing can disguise the fact that Power's motivations are too thinly sketched to be believable. In this genre, MGM's Robert Taylor had better luck with his JOHNNY EAGER opposite femme fatale Lana Turner. Tyrone deserved a better story and screenplay than he gets here.