Awesome Movie

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

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.

Edward G Robinson (Corey) returns from the war and is offered his old job back at the newspaper he used to work for. However, he has bigger ideas and wants to run his own newspaper now. The only way he can get financing to start his business is to come to a deal with gangster Edward Arnold (Lambert). They become 50/50 partners in the business - the unholy partners of the title. Robinson is one of these do-gooder types who wants to clean up the city and so, when Arnold - his financier and number 1 gangster in town - tells him to back off from a story, he disobeys him coz he wants to see justice done. What a knob-head. He is basically begging to be killed off. Whether he does get what's coming to him is up to fate.This is pretty predictable stuff with a corny ending. Robinson is good as always but Arnold is better. Thank God he is in the film. He has a sort of Raymond Burr deep voice and big thuggery frame and makes a good baddie. The rest of the cast are OK, although William T. Orr (Tommy) is slightly annoying at times. The film is not particularly good and there is no need to see it again. It finishes and then you sling it onto the junk pile - if you have any sense. Robinson's character is unconvincing and the final line is pure cheesiness. It's not a disaster but there's not a lot to say about it. Everyone has done better and it's a forgettable affair.

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.