The Fighting Rookie

The Fighting Rookie tells its crime story in a little over an hour and is the kind of bread and butter program picture that wasn't reviewed by either Variety or The New York Times. Jack La Rue, often cast in supporting parts as a nasty villain, here has the lead as a policeman who is accused of being drunk on duty so his commissioner (played by De Witt Jennings) can make it look like he is being thrown off the force, that way the cop can work more effectively undercover. Strictly routine.

Rookie cop Jack La Rue is walking his beat when he hears a woman screaming in a rooming house. He rushes in, to be attacked by the man she's with. While La Rue and the stranger struggle, the woman picks up a heavy object and knocks La Rue out. When he comes to,he's smelling of liquor He stumbles to the street, where another officer sees him and pulls him into Police Commissioner DeWitt Jennings' office to be discharged for being drunk on duty. But it was a frame-up; while he was out, a silk warehouse on his beat was robbed.

Eventually, Jennings asks La Rue to be thrown off the Force and go undercover to spy on the local bad guys. He agrees.

It takes almost the entire length of this movie for anything to happen, and then it's over before anything visually interesting happens. True, there's a fight in which La Rue is picked up, but that's rather poorly shot under the direction of Spencer Gordon Bennett. Nor does the big close seem very big, as La Rue, being told where a gun is by love interest Ada Ince, picks up the weapon and holds it on the unseen assemblage at a gambling house. The cop who has been hectoring for the entire movie says the Commissioner told him what was going on. And then it's over.