The Mob (1951)

Powerful

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

THE MOB is a fine little slice of film noir which stars Broderick Crawford in the best performance I've seen him give. He plays a cop who goes undercover as a dock worker to bring down a crime boss, uncovering murder and corruption along the way. Shades of ON THE WATERFRONT in the setting and photography, although this film predates that one. It's an enlivened little picture thanks to a cracking script full of great tough-guy dialogue and the like, and when you get a cast to make it work, it really works. Look out for a youthful Ernest Borgnine as a baddie and Neville Brand in his usual heavy performance. Despite his size, Crawford delivers an energetic turn and holds his own with the best of them, making this film above average for the genre.

The YouTube uploader seemed to want to fool some of us by ID'ing this movie as starring Broderick Crawford and Charles Bronson but Bronson only appears for a minute with only one line with no credit in this-one of his earliest film appearances. And he would have been credited as Charles Buchinski if he was billed. Anyway, Crawford is a cop who botched a police action setting in the beginning sequence so is assigned to infiltrate some crooked dealings at a dock to straighten things out. Besides Bronson, look also for early roles for Richard Kiley, Neville Brand, and Ernest Borgnine. I'll just now say The Mob was a nice surprise of a police drama from this period.

**SPOILERS** Police detective Johnny Damico, Broderick Crawford, messes up big time when he lets a cop killer, as well as the murderer of a government whiteness, get away Scot-free when he conned Johnny into thinking that the cop killer was a cop himself.Facing the loss of his job among other things Johnny agrees to go undercover in the longshoreman's union to get the goods on who's responsible in the two murders, Police Let. Marie and government witness Ed Jensen, that he's now to put his life on the line for. The police give Johnny a phony criminal record as well as new face in the newspapers, his Uncle Hecliff, and name petty hoodlum Tim Flynn from New Orleans as he ends up at this flea bag hotel, the Royal, on the docks looking for Mr. Big for a job in his crooked dock union.It doesn't take long for Johnny to make a name for himself as he gets a real easy work assignment driving a forklift that has the previous driver Culio, Frank DeKova, not at all that happy with him. After laying Cuilo out after he tried to pull a hook on him Johnny is invited to see the big man who runs the dock Joe Castro, Earnest Borgnine, who has his doubts about Johnny's real intentions.Trying to set Johnny up on a murder rap Castro's henchman Gunner, Neville Brand, works him over taking his gun and then using it to knock off Culio making Johnny, who had a fight with him that afternoon, the prime suspect. It turns out that Johnny suckered both Castro and Gunner by having two different guns on him, one that Gunner missed when he frisked him, that saved Johnny from being charged in Culio's murder.As things now start to get hot for Johnny he now has to come up with Let. Marie's and Jensen's killer the omnipresent as well as faceless Mr. Big not Joe Castro who's only one of his stooges before his cover which isn't that convincing to begin with is blown. It just happens that one of Johnny's colleagues on the docks, whom he suspected of being Mr. Big, turned out to be government agent Tom Clancy, Richard Kiley, who's also undercover. This gives Johnny some breathing room to track down the very elusive Mr. Big before Mr. Big finds out just who he is.The big break in the case comes when Johnny gets in touch with the Royal Hotel bartender Smoothie, Matt Crowley, who turns out to be a real smooth operator as well as being Mr. Big's middle or in between man. Smootie tells Johnny that his boss, or boss of bosses, Mr. Big is willing to pay him $10,000.00 to knock off a cop who's been giving him and his boys major headaches over the last two weeks. It turn out that the cop that Mr. Big wants Johnny to knock off is Johnny himself!Exciting but not that all believable ending with Johnny finally getting to face Mr. Big who's, unknowingly to him, got Johnny's girlfriend nurse Mary Kierman, Betty Buehler, as a hostage. It turns out that Mr. Big found out that Mary is the girlfriend of the cop whom he wants to knock off, Johnny Damico, and can identify him. What Mr. Big doesn't know is that cop is standing right in front of him using the name Tim Fylnn and is anything but happy, to the point of putting a slug between his eyes, the way he's and his henchmen are treating Mary!

Broderick Crawford plays a cop in this excellent crime drama. (I wouldn't call it a film noir but I'd say it got to the location of "On the Waterfront" first. And, in my very humble opinion, pulled together a better story.) The dialogue has a snappy edge that isn't found much in gangster movies of this period. The guys -- and it's mostly all guys here -- have a sarcastic way of communicating. They talk like athletes or construction workers. I've been both and I know. A lot of calling each other cheerleaders and other ways of joking about their masculinity. But it's done in a good-natured, blue collar. There is no hint of anti-gay sentiment.Broderick Crawford generally seems so different from his mother it's hard to imagine they were related in that way. But here we pick up his casually comic timing.Crawford is excellent as a policeman who goes undercover on the docks. Richard Kiley shines as one of the guys -- giving nothing away, here -- he deals with. And Matt Crowley is fine as another. (I checked on him and he played Walter Burns in a TV version of "The Front Page in 1945. Wow! I didn't know there WAS TV in 1945.) The actress playing Crawford's girlfriend isn't bad. She plays a nurse and she seems wholesome. Wholesome and dull. She seems to have few film credits.This has an authentic feel. And it's different, too. It's definitely a keeper.