Bad Company

What no one has yet pointed out is that there are so many references to Capone that it is rather uncanny.Cortez lives in a hotel as did Capone.He is protected by well armed guards as was Capone.A machine gun massacre takes place a clear reference to the St Valentins Day massacre.Furthermore this film has marked similarities with Scarface which was made ac ouple of years later in 1932.I have to say that this is an unjustly forgotten film.Despite some rather dated acting and a rather daft climax this is a gripping and well made film.The crash between a car and a streetcar is quite breathtakingly staged.So it is a film which whilst not in the first rank of gangster films eg Public Enemy and Little Caesar is nevertheless not far behind.

This film was not very well liked in its time; I remember reading an old movie magazine that had a short review on it, and the critic was not impressed at all. So when I finally caught up with it, I was pleasantly surprised.

As another review stated, the Gorio character is a real psycho with some mental problem (I'm not a doctor, so I have no name for his illness). To my knowledge it is not until "White Heat" that the movies saw someone as mentally ill as this guy. Cortez can really chew the scenery during his scenes, and they are entirely convincing.

Rather than rehash the plot, it is true that the acting is a little creaky at times, particularly during the last reel of the film, lessening its effect a bit. In the main however, this is a rare instance of a studio other than Warner Bros. producing a potent, powerful gangster movie. This was once available on laser disc; hopefully it will soon be available through Warner Archive.

My view of "Bad Company" is very split—I have never seen an old movie so split between outstanding and lousy elements. All and all it's worth watching, but in order to explain why, I have to ALERT YOU TO UPCOMING SPOILERS.

Saw this almost 20 years ago on AMC, so it's not going to be a very incisive description, but basically it's an early underworld drama with 2 young people (Helen Twelvetrees and John Garrick) trying to get untangled from a gangster (Ricardo Cortez).

Let's get the bad things out of the way, first. There's a mad scene late in the film where Twelvetrees realizes that Cortez, muttering & walking back and forth near a bust, I think of Napoleon (or himself, I don't remember), has lost his marbles. The shots alternate between Cortez, chewing the scenery, to Twelvetrees' increasingly horrified expressions. With each succeeding cut these expressions become more and more ridiculously overdrawn. In these moments, film acting seemed to move back to early Vitagraph days.

Then there's a plot angle that no one would be able to swallow. Harry Carey, playing a law enforcement officer, wants to trap Cortez and assassinate him. He's supposed to arrive at a bootlegging vessel, and when he comes downstairs on the ship, Carey will be waiting for him, with a……30 caliber mounted machine gun!! But Cortez gets wise and has Garrick go instead. We see the young fellow walking downstairs into the hold, Carey's grip on the trigger tightening, then there's an artful fade to black. Fade up on Garrick, not in unidentifiable pieces in the morgue, but waking up in the hospital with a slight leg wound. He's well enough to jump up to go out to save Twelvetrees! While going there, the taxicab he's a passenger in is struck by a trolley and almost cut in half. But Garrick just jumps out and starts running!! And now the good stuff. Arthur Miller's camera-work is excellent; one marvels at what he had to do to get an early scene where bootlegging ships rendezvous at night. No process screens, day-for-night or miniatures were used. Tay Garnett's direction is often exceedingly graceful, especially his use of dissolves during a lavish gangland wedding, which even has a dirigible dropping balloons (or maybe it was flowers). Also this is the one of the more action-packed early crime pictures I have seen—unlike "Public Enemy" or "Little Caesar", in which the shoot-outs either were clumsily or perfunctorily staged, or done off-screen.

Worth watching, if you just ignore those little problems I noted above.

Helen Twelvetrees (Helen) marries John Garrick (Steve) but is unaware of his criminal activities. She is also ignorant of the involvement of her brother Frank Conroy (Markham) in the same gang. By marrying Garrick, she unknowingly becomes part of the plans of psycho gang boss Richard Cortez (Goldie). She gradually works things out about her husband and we get a body count.

Whilst the film has scenes that can go on for a little too long as well as being slightly confusing as to what is going on at the beginning, the film does have certain sequences that are memorable after it has finished. And it is this that has just about rescued it from being thrown away as just another time passer. Cortez makes a dangerous and interesting bad guy who is only in life for self-interest. He even has a bust of himself on his desk. Ha ha. Psycho alert! And his HQ has a cool hidden area where a machine gunner is permanently situated on lobby kill duties. Walk in through the lobby - game over. A sequence that sticks in the memory is when Conroy's gang confronts Cortez at this building and go upstairs into his office for a showdown. How on earth are they going to get out of that one? I wouldn't suggest calling him names!

Just as Bad Company was a pretty decent rock band, BAD COMPANY is a pretty decent film. Like Bad Company was no Led Zeppelin, this film is no PUBLIC ENEMY but it is still worth watching.

Visually it is impressive, director Tay Garnett does what a director is supposed to do - he tells a good story by keeping your interest. His use of long fluid tracking shots, expressionist montages and symbolism is very impressive and makes this feel a lot more modern than a lot of offerings from1931.

On one level, Tay Garnett seems to be an amazing and imaginative director but what lets him down is the acting he engenders. Ricardo Cortez is the exception here - he is totally believable as Goldie Gorio, the psychotic megalomanic gangster with some very peculiar idiosyncrasies. Cortez doesn't over-act but makes this truly nasty character much larger than life without resorting to stereotypes. His almost reptilian grin imbues a real sense of menace and is the grin of somebody who isn't quite right, somebody you would not sit next to on a train!

Whereas his character is deep and fascinating, wrapped in more layers than you'd find in a bag of onions, the rest of the cast are pretty one dimensional. They've all got that uniform 'Mid-Atlantic Accent' which the Hollywood studios thought necessary back in the early 30s so seem to be completely characterless and interchangeable. Helen Twelvetrees looks the epitome of sweetness but comes across as unbelievably naïve, too innocent and wet. The script as well leaves a lot to be desired. Lines like: 'I am a gangster.' might have looked good on title cards in a silent movie but when actually spoken all sounds a little silly. In the film's defence however, in 1931 they didn't have the experience of seeing what worked on the screen and what didn't.

If you like a 1930s gangster picture, you will like this. Of the more famous ones, it probably closest to SCARFACE certainly visually and stylistically. The romantic back-story adds however another dimension to this making this a slightly rounder film that's probably a little easier to enjoy.