Apparently the third version of a Universal film written by Tod Browning in the early 1930s, this updated version has a film Noir atmosphere that starts off good but ends up rather distracted and convoluted in the middle section. What is at first a generic crime drama that somehow becomes a Christmas family film and suddenly turned back to crime with a shootout that serves no purpose to what the audience has been watching for the past 20 minutes. Alan Curtis and Ann Rutherford are ex-con who are hiding from gangster Preston Foster who wants Curtis to help him in robbing the department store that he has gotten a job in.
The sequences involving police officer Joe Sawyer's young son Jimmy Moss getting read The Christmas Story by cook Ruby dandridge are supposed to bring in a feel-good aura to the film but are a distraction, and when the crime element turns up again, it begins to feel like you're watching two different films. This of course was better done as the Fritz Lang film "You and Me" starring George Raft and Sylvia Sidney, even though this is not an official remake. As directed by Jean Yarbrough, this is a bottom of the line Universal picture that left me perplexed and feeling like I just wasted 70 minutes of valuable time.
The sequences involving police officer Joe Sawyer's young son Jimmy Moss getting read The Christmas Story by cook Ruby dandridge are supposed to bring in a feel-good aura to the film but are a distraction, and when the crime element turns up again, it begins to feel like you're watching two different films. This of course was better done as the Fritz Lang film "You and Me" starring George Raft and Sylvia Sidney, even though this is not an official remake. As directed by Jean Yarbrough, this is a bottom of the line Universal picture that left me perplexed and feeling like I just wasted 70 minutes of valuable time.