La femme à abattre

Although the star of the film in terms of first billed in The Enforcer is Humphrey Bogart, the film's main character is Ted DeCorsia in what is probably his best screen performance.

Taking a lot of inspiration from Citizen Kane, District Attorney Humphrey Bogart and his two police investigators, Roy Roberts and King Donovan try and piece back together a case against Everette Sloane who has started a new racket, murder for profit. The chief witness is Ted DeCorsia who after an attempt on his life, falls to his death while trying to escape from a window.

After DeCorsia's demise the night before the trial was to commence, Bogart and Sloane start listening to hours of tape from several witnesses to see if they can salvage the case. Like Charles Foster Kane's life, the story of the racket is told in flashback through the tapes.

DeCorsia is the main character because all roads lead to him as the number two guy, but only he can finger Sloane. DeCorsia is seen as the frightened witness and also as the tough racketeer. It's almost two characters in the same film, but DeCorsia delivers on both.

Everette Sloane is one chillingly evil villain. He's decided to sell the services of killers to those who need them. To other racketeers and to outsiders as well. No motive, the police can't track down the ] perpetrators. The words of this racket, like 'contract' and 'hit' are all familiar terms now, but then it was something fairly new.

Bogart's function is like the reporter{s} who pieced together the life of Charles Foster Kane. It's essentially passive, he's one of the few people whoever played a District Attorney in films who never got a courtroom scene. But in the end, frantically trying to find and protect a crucial witness, he becomes quite proactive to say the least.

Of course this is all borrowed from the stories about Murder, Inc. and it was familiar to the movie going public. But The Enforcer is a really taut crime drama that never lets your interest flag.

It's so good that I can almost forgive a major plot flaw. Through some gross stupidity on Bogart's part, Sloane realizes there's a witness out there who can nail him and he takes appropriate steps. I can't see in real life how that could have happened.

Still The Enforcer is a personal favorite of mine for Humphrey Bogart films and I think you'll like it too although when you see it you will see what Bogey did that almost blew the whole case.

District Attourney Ferguson loses his only witness in the trial of Albert Mendoza - the head of Murder Incorporated, an organisation of killers. With hours to go to the case is dismissed, Ferguson decides to go back over the evidence from the start to try to find something else that could be used to try him.

This film is not very famous and is never listed when people talk of Bogart. This is mainly because it's not part of his film noir, hard boiled batch and it doesn't have a strong romantic subplot. However it's still got much to cheer about. The story feels very basic by today's standards - however this was one of the first films to bring in the language of hitmen, even though now everyone knows what a "hit" and a "contract" means. The story unfolds in flashbacks, and involves flashbacks within flashbacks - so it's not as simple as you think. At it's time it was very different to other films.

The performances are all good, the group of hitmen in particular stand out in their portrayal of tough guys who turn to fear and mistrust when the law closes in. Bogart is good in a straight role but despite his billing he is not the best role. De Corsia, Sloane, Mostel et al are the real stars and are very good in their hitmen guises.

The film was based on the discovery and cases of the real "murder inc" in the 40's and is told in the crime story style that would become more used in the 1950's. Due to our familarity of the hitman scene in movies nowadays, it won't set the screen on fire but it's still very enjoyable to watch.

... in a very suspenseful but oddly constructed noir. The first part is centered on prosecutor Martin Ferguson's (Bogart's) attempt to keep star witness Rico alive until the murder trial of Albert Mendoza the next day. Rico arrives in an armored truck with cops armed with rifles surrounding him. The fact that Ferguson spends the rest of the film in flashback, wondering if he possible missed a potential witness who could replace Rico on the stand, will tell you he failed. How he failed I'll let you see for yourself. The flashback is Ferguson thinking back to the beginning of what became the Mendoza case and how everything unfolded, starting with a guy wandering into a police station saying he just killed his girlfriend, and that he was made to do it, yet he cannot lead the police to a body or produce a motive as to why anybody would want this girl dead, if she ever existed in the first place. One investigating cop thinks he is crazy, the other does not. They take this case to Ferguson, and thus the investigation begins.

One interesting thing that is done is that Mendoza is not shown until the very end. He is discussed at length, so you build up an image of this guy in your head. And then they deliver somebody as Mendoza that does not look like what you are probably expecting and who comes up with a horrific idea for a new criminal enterprise with the dispassionate logic of an accountant. This film is relatively unknown among Bogart's filmography, and that is probably because he doesn't get to display any trademark Bogart traits in his performance such as paranoia, cynicism, or bravery. Instead he is a bit of a cog in a police procedural wheel, but he still delivers.

Bretagne Windust was supposed to direct this film, and he did start out doing so but then illness caused Raoul Walsh to direct about 90% of it although he did not take credit.

This was one of the last twenty films of Bogart's career. Having finally achieved stardom with HIGH SIERRA (also directed by Raoul Walsh) and THE MALTESE FALCON, Bogie (by 1950) was in a position to pick and choose what films he would make. Artistically his peak was probably THE TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRES in 1948, but his Oscar winning film, THE African QUEEN, was in 1951, and he still had IN A LONELY PLACE and THE CAINE MUTINY in his future.

Here he returns to Walsh as his director, and leads a bunch of fellow character actors in a nice example of the thriller that is based on the error that undoes the evil criminal - an inverted detective story device that is best seen today in the television series of COLUMBO.

It is a first rate bunch of character players, led by a superb quartet of evil: Everett Sloan, Ted de Corsia, Jack Lambert, and Bob Steele. Sloan played villains before (he is that nasty customer, Arthur Bannister the great attorney, in Orson Welles's THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI), but his performance shows what he could achieve with so little. He only appears in two scenes in the film (one when he invents "Murder, Inc." before de Corsia's astounded eyes; the other when he is alternately arrogant and panic-stricken in the prison cell he resides in). A normal looking, even dapper little man, he is a human monster. De Corsia is wonderful as the "Abe Reles" character, whose fear of Sloan/"Mendoza" leads to his death (historically, Reles probably was thrown out of the window of his hotel by policemen who were bribed to do so, although they tied a set of sheets together to make it look like Reles was killed in a stupid attempt at escaping). Listen to the way he describes the unfortunate Tony Vetto, the cab driver who witnessed Mendoza's first murder, by describing his face - a combination of disgust and dismissal in the description as de Corsia reads the line. Lambert is a forgotten character actor, who played many hoods in his films (he could, like De Corsia and Steele, look threatening very easily). But he usually has above-average intelligence(watch him in THE KILLERS - he's the first of Albert Dekker's gang who figures out that the double cross may not be from Burt Lancaster). Here he tries to keep incarcerated as protection from Sloan and De Corsia, only to find he has to cooperate with Bogart to be safely imprisoned. Steele was a cowboy film star, but he appeared with Bogie twice as sadistic gunmen. Here he is Herman, one of the torpedoes of Mendoza's gang. But Herman could be a cousin of "Canino", the creep who works for Eddie Geiger in THE BIG SLEEP, and who poisons a (for once) poignantly tragic Elisha Cook Jr. Steele was a good actor, but most people who don't recall his heyday as a cowboy star remember him only as the garrulous Sergeant Duffy in television's "F-TROOP" ("There I was at the Alamo with Davy Crockett...").

The most interesting casting of all is Zero Mostel, as Babe, the hapless, fat thug who gets in over his head (but does survive, for all that). Mostel was in several good films in the early 1950s (PANIC IN THE CITY, with Richard Widmark, Jack Palance, and Paul Douglas is another example). He even was in two films with Bogart (this one and SIROCCO, where he played a slightly more evil character). But the black list ended his budding movie career, and forced him into nightclub work, and back to the legitimate theater - to ULYSSES IN NIGHTOWN, RHINOCEROS, A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM, and FIDDLER ON THE ROOF. He ended being one of the great stars of Broadway history, with two first rate performances captured on film: FUNNY THING HAPPENED.... (as Pseudolus), and THE PRODUCERS (as Max Bialystok). One can regret the unfairness of the blacklist, and the lost film performances, but then he might have remained a character actor in supporting parts, and not become a star. It is a point for all of us to think about.

Bogart may be the star, but it's De Corsia who supplies the vitality. The opening sequence remains a riveting case study in wild-eyed fear, as Rico (de Corsia) sweats a bucket load even though he's safely behind police walls. He's got good reason to sweat. The real life character that Rico appears based on, Abe "Kid Twist" Reles, ended up dead in police custody, somehow falling from a fifth story window before testifying against Murder Inc. How convenient.

This may not be the Warner Bros. of the 1930's, but it's still fast, tough, and unsentimental. And when killer Digger lets out a yelp knowing his turn has come, I was chilled to the bone and without need of fancy special effects. If the first 15 minutes amounts to paranoia run amok, the last amounts to suspense in spades as a cold-eyed killer stalks an unsuspecting girl along crowded city streets.

What a great cast of character parts-- plug-ugly psycho Jack Lambert all wrapped up in ice and apparently loving it; Fatso Zero Mostel auditioning as an assassin but serving as a kick-me doorstop instead; and a menacing Bob Steele brandishing a revolver instead of his usual six-gun, along with such familiar yet unsung faces as police chief Roy Roberts and detective King Donovan who gets an unscheduled face wash and without a towel. District attorney Bogart's good too, blending in nicely instead of trying to hog the screen as major stars sometimes do.

No romantic clinches here, just a chilling tale about an ambitious guy with a bright idea that can't be advertised in the Yellow Pages. Things get pretty complicated trying to fit the flashbacks into the unfolding events, but it all comes together in the end. Can't say I was impressed, however, by the key that unlocks the puzzle. Seems pretty far-fetched and certainly wouldn't work in these days of colorized contacts. Nonetheless, this is a surprisingly tense and uncompromised look at touchy subject that's since become familiar, but still merits a look-see.