Simply Perfect

best movie i've ever seen.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

MGM imported Edward G. Robinson over from Warner Brothers to star in The Last Gangster. Robinson brought over his Little Caesar character with him for this film.Imagine if you will Little Caesar going back to the old country and importing a wife. We don't see anything of the courtship of Robinson and his bride Rose Stradner. My guess is that Robinson wants a dutiful stay at home wife to raise his children and the Twenties flappers that he would encounter in the illegal booze business don't fill that bill.Anyway to say Rose is fresh off the farm is an understatement. She hasn't a clue what Robinson is involved in. And when Robinson goes off to Alcatraz like another well known mobster of the era for income tax evasion, she doesn't know what to make of it.In the criminal business it's impossible to be nice to those on the way up, so when you're on the way down, it's a given people are going to dump all over you. A concept Robinson can't quite get into his head. But that's what happens.The loyalest person to him is Stradner, but Robinson in no uncertain terms tells her the only function she has is to raise HIS son to whom she's given birth. After that Stradner takes up with James Stewart who plays a newspaper reporter and she marries him.After Robinson serves his ten year stretch the story takes a maudlin and rather unrealistic turn. I won't say any more lest you care to see it the next time it's broadcast.I think Edward G. Robinson knew what kind of inferior material he was in so he simply reverted to type and snarled his way through the film. James Stewart was certainly up and coming at MGM at this time, but he's given very little to do in the film, but be Rose's faithful second husband.Best performances in the film are that of Lionel Stander as Robinson's number two guy who is not someone you want as a friend and Alan Baxter as the surviving brother of a family that Robinson ordered a hit on.The sad thing was that at Warner Brothers Robinson was desperately trying to expand his range of parts and when he gets a loan-out assignment it's more of the same.

I saw "The Last Gangster" (1937) for the first time last night (7/18/2006) and found it to be a fairly entertaining film. Edward G. Robinson's acting,as per usual in gangster movies of this type, carried the film. It had its weak moments (like Rose Stander's acting) and its unlikely moments(like the final shooting scene), but it remained fairly entertaining just the same. There was one rather strange item about the film. One of the 1930s more identifiable "bad guy" actors (Edward Pawley) appeared only briefly in this film (in the scene where the mob tortures Robinson's character)and didn't have a single line of dialog! I found this rather odd after having seen Edward Pawley play featured roles such as: Public Enemy Number One in "G-Men", the head of a gangster mob in "King Solomon of Broadway", a crazed and rebellious convict in "Each Dawn I Die", a prominent gangster in "Smashing The Rackets" and in "Eyes of the Underworld", Bogart's bad-guy partner in "The Oklahoma Kid, et cetera. Perhaps this lends some additional credence to what some critics have claimed to be poor directing of this movie. Perhaps, also, the fact that there was no love lost between Robinson and Pawley had something to do with it. Interestingly, Pawley went on to replace Robinson as "Steve Wilson" in the long-running and highly popular radio drama series, Big Town, in the 1940s.

Starts out OK, obviously patterned on Capone's downfall resulting in him being shipped off to Alcatraz. And for about 10 minutes once Robinson gets there this promised to be a gripping gangster drama. But does it all slide downhill quick after that, turning into a bowl of sentimental slop about his redemption over the love of his son who is born while he's off to the bighouse.Robinson does a stalwart enough tough guy turn here, but he's just doing what he did in his sleep back then, so the film cannot be recommended on his performance alone. It's a bad film. Very hackneyed script that fails its promise. James Stewart fans won't consider this his finest hour either. He's stuck in a contrived part as Robinson's ex wife's new hubby. The scene where he first meets her has to be seen to be believed. Then there's that Clark Gable moustache he's forced to wear after the story jumps ahead 10 years. His embarrassment shows.Unless you're on a mission to see everything Edward G. or Jimmy Stewart ever appeared in, this one's really only good for a laugh.

There are a lot of theoretical strikes against this movie-- Robinson playing a Capone lookalike for the zillionth time (right before he switched mainly to playing them for comedy in things like A Slight Case of Murder and Brother Orchid); post-Code MGM instead of pre- Code Warner Bros., which surely means a softer handling of the gangster theme; a no-name director and female co-star, Jimmy Stewart in a thankless good guy role; and, not least, a sort of gangster Sin of Madelon Claudet plot in which Robinson gets to get weepy about not knowing his son while he's in Alcatraz.And amazingly, it's all handled remarkably freshly-- and toughly, especially from the point where the movie pulls the rug out from under big shot Robinson with a long and realistically bleak prison train sequence. Almost every opportunity to sink into cliche is rethought to find a fresher angle-- instead of the archetypal Warner Bros. tough-guy prison, with the warden acting like a crime boss himself to keep his charges in line, the movie's Alcatraz is a streamlined, impersonal machine for reducing men to numbers, the striking production design as institutionally cold as the manner of the warden. The classic welcome home from the boys (such lovable gangster lugs as Lionel Stander and Edward Brophy) takes a highly unexpected turn-- and keeps turning. Although the scenes where he finally meets his son again are hampered by unrealistic dialogue for the kid, in all this is a strong and thoughtful adult drama which brings emotional realism back to a genre usually riddled with cliches.