6/10
Continually smart, punchy dialogue...but the second-half is almost another picture entirely
17 August 2011
Truck-driving brothers George Raft and Humphrey Bogart have nightly adventures hauling produce to local markets until Raft lands himself a position in the office; unfortunately, this means having to mingle with the raucous boss and the boss's wife, a scheming shrew with murder on her mind. Raoul Walsh ably directed this quintessential Warner Bros. drama, hard-bitten and yet humorously disengaged. However, one can easily sense the narrative coming unhinged in the second-half, which leads to a jailhouse-and-courtroom finale that seems to have nothing to do with the promising earlier scenario of working stiffs on the open road. The pungent, pithy dialogue from screenwriters Jerry Wald and Richard Macaulay (working from A.I. Bezzerides' novel "Long Haul") can't camouflage the shift in priorities, and the 'winking' tag seems like a put-on. Still entertaining, with Raft a smoldering (if somewhat stationary) screen presence. **1/2 from ****
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