Marked Men

Although Marked Men starts rather haphazardly once it gets going it turns out to be a pretty nice drama with both men against men and men against the elements present in it.

I could never quite buy why Warren Hull was in prison, how could he be that naive? Allegedly a group of some rather rough types ask medical school student Hull to do a driving job for them. It turns out being the getaway driver in a bank robbery. Later on Hull can't make anybody believe that he got innocently roped into it.

It doesn't wear well today, but I'm guessing that those Depression Era audiences people did a lot for money and just learned not to ask questions until the consequences smacked them in the face.

In any event leader Paul Bryar likes Hull's company so much that he takes him along during a jail break when a couple of guards were killed. Now Hull is on the hook for murder, but he gets separated from the others as they pull yet another job.

Hull and a German shepherd dog start traveling together after meeting in the desert. Then Hull arrives at a small town and settles there, even meeting Isabel Jewell and her doctor father John Dilson. But he can't escape the gang and in the end goes back to the desert where Bryar and the group are fleeing after some more robberies.

What's a mediocre film up to this point becomes a fine drama in the end. All the elements of vicious greedy men with little water come to the fore. Worst of all is Bryar who cannot control his own greedy impulses. But it's here where Hull proves to be the toughest.

This one is from the poverty row studio PRC. But occasionally they turn out a decent film and this is definitely one of them.