The Enforcer (1951)

Best movie of this year hands down!

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

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

For some reason, I thought this film was a lot earlier than 1951. The reason is that it looks for all the world like a B movie and sounds like one. It's possible Bogart owed Warners a film, though what his excuse was for making "The Two Mrs. Carrolls" I've never figured out. He must have owed them a lot of films. Apparently the director became quite ill and Bogart asked Raoul Walsh, who refused to take any credit, to take over. This helps the film to come off well, but to me it still seems like a B movie with an A list star and director."The Enforcer" is a crime noir, with Bogart as Martin Ferguson, a frustrated District Attorney who loses yet another witness against a crime boss, Albert Mendoza (Everett Sloane). Ferguson's witness (Ted de Corsia) is due to go into court the next day, but he panics and tries to leave via a window too many flights up.Ferguson stays up the night before the trial with Captain Nelson (Roy Roberts) going over the case incident by incident, trying to figure out if there is anybody else who can help him put this killer in prison.There are flashbacks within flashbacks here as different people tell a story about the organization.I liked the denouement of this movie. I found it effective and also suspenseful.Bogart, as usual, is great, as the no-nonsense DA, and he has good support from Zero Mostel, Sloane, King Donovan, and Michael Tolan, among others.Good crime drama.

This is a very good film. It got me thrilled from the very beginning. The story starts when the main witness on a murder trial falls to death accidentally just the night before the trial, and then the District Attorney begins to review all the case over, seeking some other conviction clue against the defendant. From then on, all the movie is made of flashbacks which tell you (not always in chronological order) the whole police investigation that has been carried out to break up that crime organization.The keys: Actually this is not a Bogie's film, for he doesn't play an important part in the action: Most of the time, he just listens to what others do. In fact, this is nobody's film, for the play is quite well distributed between the characters. And the director has been clever enough to give each one of the players quite enough a part to describe his/her character perfectly.The details: There are a lot of details in the action, on which I didn't realize the first 4 or 5 times I saw the movie. But after seeing it a dozen times (believe it or not), I enjoy every one of them. For example, try to understand why Ricco's hand was slipping when Ferguson tried to grab it. Or guess whatever happened to Vince. Or what is the thing "you can carry around in the hat", as Mendoza said. Or just ask yourself why Rico was such a good employer for his employees: paying without having them work, providing lawyers, taking care of their families...The moral: I even try to figure out if there is a moral conclusion laying under the plot. Maybe there is one, if one comes to analyze the murderers characters: All of them seem quite tough when they have a gun, but they break down when feeling threatened (even the impassive and cool Mendoza), revealing themselves as a bunch of cowards. And there is another important fact: In the end, NO ONE GOT TO ESCAPE. Up to eight of them end up violently killed, and the other five regret (or seem to) and agree to collaborate with the police.The goofs: Unfortunately there are plenty of goofs in the action: Olga Kirshen talks too much, same as Angela Vetto; Big Babe hides in the church, as if it were a safe place to hide from murderers; Angela assumes Teresa's personality in a way which is not credible; Rico knocks poor Whitlow's head over the washbasin without Ferguson nor Nelson hearing it, although they are in the room next door; The apparent lack of impeachments for disappearing people in all those years of murders... Still, that doesn't harm the plot that much.Although not quite realistic, the acting (Ted De Corsia at his best), the plot and the direction make a thrilling picture which worths a view... well, more than one view.

I've long been convinced that popular fiction and movies are true barometers of social history and The Enforcer tends to bear me out. What five-year-old child at any time in the last forty years would be unable to interpret 'contract' and 'hit' when encountered in the context of a thriller/noir/caper/gangster movie yet here, in 1951, both hard-bitten detectives and an Assistant District Attorney are as bemused as Hoosier tourists hearing Urdu for the first time whilst on vacation in the sub-Continent. For a few moments this tends to strain credulity when watching this in 2010 but we're soon wallowing in the great casting that tosses such disparate actors as Bob Steele, Zero Mostel, Everett Sloane, Roy Roberts, Ted de Corsica and Bogie into the mix. Bogie is, it must be said, strangely subdued as yet another D.A. -he had, after all, been playing them since Marked Woman, Knock On Any Door, etc - but even the multi flashbacks can't really spoil this good old-fashioned 'thick ear' entry.

You won't hear "The Enforcer" mentioned when it comes to Humphrey Bogart's body of famous work, but it's a very watchable mystery that pulls you in early, and keeps you interested with each new revelation. Bogie's character is Assistant District Attorney Martin Ferguson, who along with police pal Frank Nelson (Roy Roberts), unravels a murder for profit enterprise in a deftly told story with a clever twist that finally sinks the big fish behind it.Like the Charlie Chan films of an earlier era, I found that keeping a scorecard for the colorful cast of characters is helpful to keep track of the action. You've got names like Big Babe, Philadelphia Tom, Smiley, Sad Eyes and Duke Molloy to keep track of, all as the story unfolds in a flashback within a flashback framework. One of the more interesting things for me in this 1950 film was it's explanation of the terms "contract" and "hit", obviously recent additions to the crime lexicon for it's day, though hardly unknown today.The movie offers a lot of clichéd lines that were probably fresh at the time, take Ferguson's command to the paranoid Rico (Ted De Corsia) the day before he's set to testify against mob boss Mendoza (Everett Sloane) - "He'll die, he's got to die, and you're going to kill him." Though Rico dies in a fall while trying to escape from testifying, we later see him in a flashback scene recounting how he was present at Mendoza's first "hit" of a café owner. Apparently, Mendoza's murder for hire racket had quite a few customers; when Ferguson has the authorities dredge a swamp where a couple victims were expected to be found, they wound up with an evidence room table filled with the shoes of his victims. That was one of the credibility defying scenes that seemed a little over the top, even though done in understated fashion.With only a few hours to find a way to put Mendoza away for good, Ferguson strains his memory for a possible clue that may have been largely ignored when Rico initially gave himself up. I think they had a song for it - "Don't it make your brown eyes blue".If you can get your hands on this little gem, give it a try. One of Bogie's last films, it holds up well, even though certain elements mentioned earlier mark it as a period piece. For all that, it offers a capable cast that delivers it's story well, amid dingy interrogation rooms and sordid back alleys. Have fun!