Boy Who Caught a Crook (1961)
The Boy Who Caught a Crook is a 1961 childrens film about a young boy who tracks down a gangster.
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As Good As It Gets
A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
Young newsboy Roger Mobley and an old man friend of his Don Beddoe find a briefcase in a vacant lot that was presumably thrown by bank robber Johnny Seven to avoid getting caught. Beddoe opens the briefcase in a filling station bathroom and says it's empty to the cops Robert Stevenson and reporter Richard Crane.But Seven is coming back for his stolen loot and despite protestations to the contrary he's convinced Mobley or Beddoe or both of them have it. He's already risked time in the federal penitentiary for bank robbery so he wants his money. The Boy Who Caught A Crook is a nice, but below average kid's film with a few too many holes in the story to be terribly convincing to anyone over 14. Wanda Hendrix turns in a nice performance as well as Mobley's widowed mother. In fact the whole cast is decent and sincere, but the film just doesn't rise above mediocrity.And I guess the title itself gives it all away.
The flat yarn about a young kid who found a suitcase filled with stolen money. And of course, there is the villain to look after it.I nearly fell to sleep while I watched it. I almost succeeded if there was not the gorgeous Wanda Hendrix, lost in this little programmer. Perhaps she had to pay her electricity bill...I prefer - from the great Edward L Cahn - "Guns, Girls and Gangsters", Cage of Evil, Experiment Alcatraz or Destination Murder. Those are masterpieces, compared to this one.Meanwhile, let's be fair, this is not the worst of all; but not the best either. It was written by Nathan Juran.