The Reckoning

A movie about jewel thieves instantly conjures up glamour and suspense, but a prehistoric entry in the genre, 1932's "The Reckoning", delivers the opposite. It's difficult to imagine a more boring, static and uninteresting movie that unfolds like a stage play -one that folded during out-of-town tryouts.

Sally Blane is the winsome heroine, perhaps the only reason for smaling this clunker. Right from the outset she's fatalistic, as her boyfriend, a stolid performance by James Murry, is destined for prison. It's only a matter of time, and time moves very slowly in this film.

The doomed lovers' story is completely uninteresting, shifting the movie's focus to a villain (Edmund Breese) versus a cop (Tom Jackson). Both of them are cynical, sarcastic and surprisingly inert. It's as if the director went to film school but played hooky during any courses about editing, action, or anything slightly cinematic. Right up through the sudden climax, it's difficult to avoid dozing off.

The plot idea for "The Reckoning" is decent, but pretty much everything else about this film screams 'CHEAP'! The acting isn't particularly good, the dialog stilted and often scenes seem incredibly artless and lazy. Given more competent direction and a decent budget, this film might have worked. As it is, it's not a particularly enjoyable film to watch.

When the story begins, you'll hear the theme from "Swan Lake"...which also had been used a year earlier for "Dracula"! This jarred me...and I couldn't help but think it was only used because the music must have been in the public domain. As for the rest of the film, it had no music at all...no incidental music and this made for a strangely quiet film.

The plot involves two idiot lovers who are crooks and work for a scumbag named 'Doc'. Doc is a crook and when the pair talk about changing their lives and living law abiding lives, you know that sooner or later Doc will try to ruin them or re-involve them in his various illegal schemes. In this case, he wants to use the pair to help him in a robbery/kidnapping! What's next? Watch the film...or don't.

The film never felt tense or realistic in the least. Slow, plodding and uninteresting...the movie certainly was a tough one to finish.

It's a B mystery directed by Harry Fraser and starring James Murray and Sally Blane. While there's nothing wrong with any of the performances, certainly Fraser was never a particularly interesting director, and this story about how the two leads are making an effort to get out of the rackets and not succeeding very well is clearly something in the background of film noir.

The leads are appealing and natural, but the stiff dialogue does not suit them. Here's a very early proto-noir with nothing visually striking that you can skip.

James Murray and Sally Blane play crooked lovers trying to go straight despite the best efforts of Murray's former boss, Edmund Breese, to lure them back into a life of crime in this lifeless drama directed by Harry L. Fraser. Although Blane gives a decent account of herself, the acting is otherwise poor and the dialogue weak, and some of the scenes go on forever.

The problem here was the short space of time (only a little over an hour), which is okay for a TV episode, but not so okay for a movie. There's not enough time for either plot or character development, and while I was happy with the ending, I was not so happy with the road leading to it, which wasn't much.

Two things it accomplished: for once, jewel theft was stripped of its glamour, which it too often gets in other films, as if it's a pretty good choice for anyone contemplating a career. Our couple in crime (Sally Blane and James Murray) have long since rejected any glamour in their "career" and want very much to make a change of profession which, of course, will not be easy.

The second thing (at least for me) was the interest John Murray's real-life story, which could have been a really good bio pic, if someone had thought of it. (Apparently King Vidor had but never followed through.)

This short movie starts steady, falls downhill, then swings uphill at the end, but still never makes much of an impression.