Watch Corsair For Free

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Corsair (from 1931) is a real moldie-oldie, that, in spite of its obvious age and creakiness, still manages to be fairly entertaining, in the long run.This 83-year-old Comedy/Romance/Adventure story tells the roundabout tale of how dashing, college, football hero, Johnny Hawkes, meets cheeky, spoilt, heiress, Alison Corning.Before long Hawkes finds himself captain of the Corsair (a sleek, high-speed gunboat).Imminent danger lurks everywhere once Hawkes and his crew begin dealing with ruthless, modern-day pirates involved in big-time liquor smuggling.With its story set mainly in the West Indies, Corsair (at 72 minutes) certainly had its fair share of high-seas action, violence and double-crosses.This fast-paced story starred blond beauty, Thelma Todd (murdered at 29) and early-talkies heart-throb, Chester Morris (suicide at 69).

That's how the villain in this film describes his gang of cut-throats, and 80 years later, there's even more modern methods to piracy, so that analyzation is quite a coincidence. Here is the story of a college football hero (Chester Morris) who is so angered by his greedily powerful boss that he plots revenge on him and lands a twist on the powerful Wall Street broker (Emmett Corrigan) that might have you howling in delight, especially considering that 80 years later, the same things are still happening on Wall Street with even more diabolical results.Morris can't help but be attracted to the Wall Street broker's spoiled ninny of a daughter (Thelma Todd, billed as as Alison Loyd), a selfish sort who, like Carmen, gets more intrigued by the man every time he rejects her or treats her worse. She's engaged to an effeminate dapper dan, and at one point, even asks him if he's really her fiancée or just experimenting. So of course, this is pre-code, and has some genuinely delicious pre-code references as it deals with the piracy of bootlegging. The Walter Matthau of the 1930's, Ned Sparks, is on hand as Morris's grouchy sidekick, with Mayo Methot as his moll whom Sparks orders to make love to a rather ugly pirate nicknamed "Fish Face" (Frank Rice). The future Mrs. Bogart has a truly amazing moment when she follows her lover's orders with shocking results.Then there's Frank McHugh, on loan from Warner Brothers and giving his signature "ha ha ha" laugh, as Morris's classmate who sticks by him until the end. The film is interesting because it takes the bootlegging angle away from street gangsters, replacing them with pirates. There is an ocean-set battle between the two different gangs of bootleggers which provides much excitement and gives a modern twist on the old pirate tradition of walking the plank.

The film begins with a big college football game. Although the score is tied, in true Hollywood fashion, the game is an upset win the last seconds. The hero of the game, Chester Morris, is invited to a swanky party where he meets the slightly stuck up rich girl, Thelma Todd. However, when she learns he is poor, she is at first uninterested. Then, on a lark, she gets him a job with her unscrupulous father on Wall Street--maybe if Morris is rich and successful, she can still have him for her own.In the meantime, she leaves for Europe and won't return for a year. In the meantime, Morris tries his best but because he's ethical, he just can't bring himself to push junk bonds for his sleazy boss. Now here's where it gets strange, as he's very ethical and can't hurt poor shmoes, when he's fired, he decides to become very, very crooked but instead target rich jerks! His plan is to hijack shipments of high-quality mob liquor that are being held offshore (due to Prohibition).Now that Morris is finally somebody (yeah, a crook), Todd returns from her trip and is immediately taken with him. After all, being rich and powerful seems to be all that Todd cares about in a man! Well, what happens next is something you'll just have to see for yourself.The film does have some decent action scenes, though the plot, at times, is very far-fetched (especially towards the end). For example, once Morris does hijack the booze, he allows the people he just robbed to live--and they would certainly eventually take revenge on him for his villainy--after all, they are mobsters. In addition, he also retires after this one and only holdup--it seems this whole stunt was done to teach his future father-in-law a lesson AND get the girl!(?) Kinda weird, huh--especially when the father-in-law then hires Morris to work for him--even though it turned out that the shipment of booze actually belonged to Todd's father!! Huh?! Because the film kind of made my head hurt at the end (and it should because I made the mistake of thinking), it drops the overall score to 5--a time-passer but not much more.

Pretty good adventure flick as Wayne Morris, fed up with the petty piracy of Wall Street, goes into business for himself, highjacking rumrunners' ships bound to Prohibition America. Some pretty good sequences featuring Fred Kohler as a sadistic gangster, although Thelma Todd is pretty well wasted as a role that calls for her to play an idiot.