.jpg)
Joe calls on Niles, using the payoff as leverage to force Niles to make a house call for another member of his gang, and, while there the police raid the place leading to Niles’s death while Joe escapes. The DA is intent on making a show of things and so they charge Carole in association with the gangster leaving her with just three months to clear her name or lose her license. With no other options in front of her she schemes to get close to Joe and his gang in an attempt to take the man down and exonerate herself. Meanwhile, Joe, who has a literal Napoleon complex, has kidnapped a hitchhiking author, Bill (James Stephenson), whom Carole had recently met and fallen for, and is forcing him to ghost write his autobiography.
And thus plays out the somewhat underwhelming drama that is King of the Underworld. It is watchable thanks to a over-the-top scene-chewing performance by Bogart, who seems to be enjoying being here a lot more than any of his co-stars. Kay Francis is brassy and matches Bogart beat for beat, subtly insulting the gangster with words and phrases that go over his head. Physically she would be no match for him or his men so she must utilize the one thing she has over them, her intellect. Neither Joe, nor his men, are portrayed as intelligent enough to see the danger Carole brings to their circle.
This might play out better had any of them been more than caricatures, identified by nicknames like Slick, Porky and Mugsy. The screenplay gives these guys about as much thought character-wise as it does these names. They are painted so broadly and played somcomically that it is at odds with the tension it is trying to build. When Carole out smarts them in the final act, only Joe questions her actions and barely at that. The outlandishness of the finale is mostly void of tension because of the absurdity of the gang. There is the distinct impression that director Lewis Seiler was trying to make a legitimate gangster film but he has painted his characters so broadly that It’s hard to take them seriously.
While it’s true this film is not very good it is not without its merits. Watching Bogart get insulted without realizing it is a hoot. Carole likes to use big words around him just so she can get away with calling him a moron to his face. The fact that not a single one of Joe’s gang recognizes the insults is equally funny. Or perhaps they did and didn’t dare speak up. Either way it injects the film with some levity and keeps it moving. These scenes are also the only moments where Kay Francis stands out. Outside of her interactions with Joe she is a boring character that exists simply to move the plot from A to B. Her relationship with Bill in the second half of the film is poorly developed and the final scene with them feels tacked on and unearned.
This could have been a better film had more effort gone into making it. As it is it’s simply just a hastily churned out bit of entertainment that occasionally works but mostly just fizzles out into mediocrity. The comedic bits, while funny, don’t juxtapose well with the suspenseful scenes. The central drama is truncated and sacrificed for the sake of a short runtime. Scenes with Carole and Will falling for each other would help build the suspense when Will gets kidnapped. Instead we have to fill in those blanks ourselves and that just isn’t satisfying, especially with that tacked on epilogue. Hollywood churned out hundreds of such films in the day simply to get something into theaters and make a quick buck. It accomplishes that but could have been so much more.
Running Time: 67 Minutes
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Kay Francis
Director: Lewis Seiler
Comments
Post a Comment