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Fresh and Exciting

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Pat O'Brien shows up on the docks, down and out and in need of a job. His brother Chester Morris, construction manager, reluctantly hires him on. Very soon we discover that O'Brien's real job here is not building ships.This WWII spy thriller has a bit of romance thrown in and features an assortment of characters whose personal and wartime lives often overlap: Carole Landis and Ruth Warrick are both quite good as women doing jobs that take precedence--at least during wartime--over their personal lives or relationships. Landis is a fellow agent who poses as O'Brien's wife; Warrick is Morris's assistant in the shipyard office. Morris would like to marry Warrick but she may still have feelings for her old flame, O'Brien--whose professional regard for Landis may grow into something more. Wallace Ford, always fun to watch, is part of "the team"--his main job being spotting Nazis at the shipyard. Barton MacLane is excellent as a rough-edged yard worker whose eventual friendship with O'Brien is hard fought. The plot is solid: O'Brien and Ford keep an eye out for saboteurs while Morris and Warrick, realizing that O'Brien is no ordinary dock worker, keep an eye on him. There's some comic relief that isn't too funny, unfortunately, and also some cute scenes involving a couple of war orphans that just aren't real convincing. It's a great role for O'Brien, though, as that rugged American everyman who doesn't say much but performs awesome feats.

TCM gave this four stars. It's a 2-1/2 stars film, in my opinion.Pat O'Brien is Sam Gallagher, a U.S. government agent, a step up from his old job as a foreign correspondent. His brother Jeff (Chester Morris) offers him a job working in a shipyard as a pileback. Piles are poles, driven into the soil by a mechanical device to give a foundation to a structure Sam's purpose is to ferret out a group of Nazi spies trying to sabotage the shipyards. To give him a background, Jill McCann (Carole Landis), who is an FBI agent, poses as his wife, and two small war orphans are brought in as his children.Jeff is surprised by all this - okay, he hasn't seen his brother in seven years, but something isn't right. He tells Lea Damoran (Ruth Warrick, his girlfriend who used to be Sam's girlfriend) his thoughts.Sam is able to find out that the yard is going to be blown up the yard while an aircraft carrier is docked. And he begins to learn who the Nazis are in the yard. One problem: His brother's suspicions are drawing too much attention to Sam.Pat O'Brien for me has never made it as a leading man, yet for some reason, every once in a while he was given a lead role. This is a role for Joel McCrea, John Wayne, that ilk: masculine, solid, and, frankly, kind of a chick magnet. I mean, on one side there's gorgeous Carole Landis, and on the other, his old girlfriend who still has feelings for him.The story is only so-so, but the final scenes are quite good. The subplot concerning the war orphans is sweet and probably unnecessary.Carole Landis would be dead only four years later, at the age of 29. I suspect the affair with Harrison was probably the last straw. She was done in Hollywood: she was nearing 30, the cutoff age for actresses back then, there were no more big films thanks to her relationship with Darryl Zanuck ending, she couldn't have children, and at the age of 29, she had already had four husbands. A sad end for a beautiful woman who learned that in Hollywood, you're disposable.

Government agent Pat O'Brien goes undercover at a shipyard where his estranged brother Chester Morris works. Pat's trying to root out Nazi saboteurs. Part of his cover is that stunning Carole Landis pretends to be his wife. Something tells me they didn't have to twist Pat's arm to take this assignment. The look on Pat's face when he comes home to see Carole in her tight-fitting dress is priceless. Well paced WW2 espionage movie with a decent script and likable leads. Very nice supporting cast includes Ruth Warrick, Barton MacLane, Tom Tully, and Wallace Ford. One of those little hidden gems you come across on TCM every once in awhile. A must-see for Carole Landis fans.

These things generally are more interesting for their social history than the cinematic experience. But that history is hot and heavy here.Its a strange thing to witness, how Hollywood toes the line on perceived social needs, sometimes taking the lead from Washington.The US entered the war with a strategy not based on valor, or military prowess. It was simply based on outproducing the bad guys. We could make stuff faster than they could blow it up. So industrial sabotage was a real worry. We weren't worried about the Japanese because we simply locked up anyone who looked Japanese.It was the Germans who "looked like us," that were the worry.So Hollywod ginned up some stories to fit, and this is probably the best of the bunch. The interesting thing here is how far the Irish had come as the prototype American. Only a few decades before, Irish (with Jews) were considered slime. They were quite literally the "other," the non-American. Its anyone's guess why they rose so quickly. The common theories don't hold much water because we see other groups who behaved much the same way and never achieved the exalted status of the Irish as movie icons. But here we have it in spades: brawling is an honorable, friendly thing. Booze is never mentioned. All the hard working, patriotic, tough souls here are Irish. They win the war with pluck and expect no reward or recognition.Now, that's a story. Incidentally, though the story, sets and action are pure hokum, that acting here is pretty modern and realistic. I think that's related to the Irish story.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.