Waste of time

Fantastic!

Excellent but underrated film

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Interesting that Edward G. Robinson would be playing his non-gangster role almost like a gangster here. After shaking hands with shady Merrill Lambert (Edward Arnold) on a fifty-fifty newspaper deal, Bruce Corey (Robinson) takes the tabloid approach and runs his front page with garish headlines intended for shock value. I had a sit up and take notice moment when in a concession to modern times (for 1941), Corey claimed that there wasn't any privacy anymore! Holy smokes, can you see him dealing with the internet today? One has to chuckle a bit whenever one of The Mercury Mirror newspapers hits the stands and you catch the price tag - two cents for a single copy! Wow, there really was a time when talk was cheap. And if you were a regular customer, you always got 'the news before it happens'! You would think Corey's approach would backfire more often than not but he seemed to make it work for the most part.I liked that scene when Lambert offered to put up his entire half of the newspaper in a rigged card game with a marked deck. Apparently Corey had been around that block once before and called him out on it while holding a full house and asking for four cards. Plenty of chutzpah there, and a brilliant move to keep editorial control of the paper on his own terms.This wasn't the first time Robinson appeared in a film with a newspaper backdrop. He was also the editor of The Gazette in the 1931 movie "Five Star Final", remade five years later using a radio station backdrop to basically tell the same story, this time using Humphrey Bogart in the Robinson role. That one was "Two Against the World" from 1936, with the alternate title "One Fatal Hour". Both are recommended for fans of the principals, just as I would recommend this one for Robinson's effective play against Edward Arnold in an often tense story.With a finale that eerily previews the scene in the following year's "Casablanca", Bruce Corey high tails it out of town after his final encounter with Lambert, fully intending to return at some point down the road to face the music after putting away the racketeer. It all made sense to me until the scene faded with the saddened 'Croney' Cronin lamenting her boss's decision - why exactly would there have been a campfire in the middle of the airplane terminal? Hey, best line of the film that had nothing to do with the story - newspaper writer Mike Reynolds (Don Beddoe) commenting on his failed marriages: "My three honeymoons were the happiest time of my life"! Now that's a positive attitude.

Edward G. Robinson plays a newspaperman who comes home from World War I with a plan to launch a tabloid newspaper. The problem is he can't find financial backing from any reputable businessmen, so he gets it from racketeer Edward Arnold. Which is fine, at first, until Robinson starts running stories that tick Arnold off.Enjoyable crime drama from MGM with solid turns from the two Edwards playing characters that aren't so nice. Kind of funny that the protagonist in this is less likable than the villain!. They always tried to give Eddie G. young love interests and in this one it's Laraine Day, who wasn't even born when WWI ended. She's fine but miscast as one could never see her being into Robinson and, frankly, she's at least a decade younger than she should have been. Really I'm not sure why it was necessary to set the film in the post-WWI years, especially when they don't try very hard to capture that era. Many of the hairstyles and clothing are of the 1940s not 1920s. The movie also features a banal "young lovers" subplot. William T. Orr plays the guy and he is nothing special. Lovely Marsha Hunt plays the girl and she gets to sing, which is nice, but other than that also nothing special. Despite some issues, there's no way a movie starring Edward G. Robinson and Edward Arnold could be a total misfire. The movie is most interesting when these two are on screen together. Give it a look for the Eddies.

****SPOILERS**** Edward G. Robinson as hard hitting editor of the New York Mercury newspaper Bruce Coprey bites off more then he can chew when he starts going after his silent partner in the paper big time mobster Merrill Lambert, Edward Arnold. This ends up with Corey's star reporter young 23 year old Tommy Jarvis, Wittiam T. Orr, being kidnapped by Lambert's hoods and threatened to be disappeared, or murdered, by them unless Corey hands over his 50% of the newspaper to Lambert. It was by Tommy discovering an insurance & loan shark racket that Lambert was involved in that was the straw that broke the camel's back as far as Lambert was concerned. Now taking off the gloves and playing hard ball newspaper editor Corey resorts to the same tactics that his unholy partner was involved in with him freeing Tommy from Lambert's clutches even if he has to kill to do it.Even though the Mercury was a smashing success publishing tabloid like news stories editor Corey just couldn't help going after his partner on the paper Merrill Lambert who he felt was an insult to everything that America stands for. In turn by going on a holy crusade against Lambert Corey himself ended up being not that much better hen he is. You seem to notice that Corey was really enjoying what he was doing to expose Lambert and his bookie insurance gambling and loan shark rackets but was doing it for his own self gratification not to really help those victimized by them. In fact Cory like to do some illegal gambling on his own which ended up getting him the cash he needed to start up his hard hitting against crime newspaper in the first place. With Tommy's life now in danger because of his attempts to expose and have indited his partner in the newspaper Merrill Lambert Corey goes all out to free him even at the expense of his both reputation as well as life to do it.****SPOILERS**** After getting the job done by whacking Lambert, who in fact tried to whack him, and getting Tommy freed Corey takes a trans Atlantic flight, that his newspaper is sponsoring, with famed French pilot Molyneaux, Marcel Dailo, across the Atlantic Ocean only to fly into a violent sea storm and be lost at sea. This not only confirms Corey's reputation as a fighter against crimes but keeps him from being arrested and indited for Lambert's murder which was in fact a case of self defense. As for Tommy Jarvis he can now go back to work replacing Corey as the editor of the Mercury newspaper and continue the work, in fighting and exposing crime, that his good friend the late or lost at sea Bruce Corey started.

Potentially interesting story of go-ahead newspaperman Robinson and gangster Arnold as co-owners of groundbreaking tabloid newspaper, wrecked by reducing almost everything to melodrama. Despite the shadowy George Barnes cinematography and great performances by leads and supporting cast, the glossy MGM house style takes the sort of ripped-from-headlines story that director Leroy used to do at Warner Brothers -- often starring Robinson -- and reduces it to mush.