Watch Vice Squad For Free

Beautiful, moving film.

It's one of the most original films you'll likely see all year, which, depending on your threshold for certifiably crazy storylines, could be a rewarding experience or one that frustrates you.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

(Some Spoilers) On location in L.A crime drama involving a gang of hoods planing a bank robbery that's to put them on easy street for the rest of their lives.Right from the start the two head men of the bank robbery team Al Barkis, Edward Binn, and Pete Monty, Lee Van Cleef, make the big mistake of gunning down a cop-Officer Kellogg-who caught them in the process of hot wiring a car just hours the robbery was to take place. Wih Officer Kellogg later dying from his wounds you would expect both Barkis & Monty to cancel their plans in them facing a trip to the San Quentin gas chambers if caught! Instead they plan to go on with the bank robbery but keep their fellow bank robbers in the dark in their responsibly in Offcer Kellogg's murder!Unknown to both Barkis & Monty there was indeed an eye witness to the Kellogg killing the meek and secretive, in him having an affair behind his battle ax wife's back, undertaker Jack Hartkampf, Porter Hall. At the time of the Kellogg shooting Hartkampf was spending the evening at his girlfriend Vicki Webb, Joan Vosh, apartment. It was Hartkampf that LAPD Captain Barnie "Bulldog" Barnaby, Edward G. Robinson, keyed in on in breaking the case in the Kellogg killing in getting him to identify his killers. What Capt. Barnaby didn't at the time realize is that the Kellogg shooting was just to tip of the iceberg to what was to happen later in the film.Somewhat over-plotted with a lot of side stories that made the main plot, the cop killing and bank robbery, of the film a bit hard to follow but the top rate acting, especially by Eddie Robinson, and on location filming made "Vice Squad" more then worth watching. There's also Paulette Goddard as the second billed model escort agency owner Mona Ross who also happens to be an old flame of Capt. Barnaby. Goddard was on the screen for such a short period of time that you wondered why she was credited at all! With most of the cast members, not being credited, having more screen time then she did.There's' also the movie title "Vice Squad" which had nothing really to do with the film since vice was almost nonexistence, with Capt. Barnaby being in the homicide division of the LAPD, in the entire movie. The only vice I could spot in the film was that of the greasy looking gigolo Count Al Fredo Glovannie Mortova, John Verros, who was actually a con man from Cleveland. It's the "Count" who tried to marry, for her money, widow Mrs Lawson under false, in him being a European blue-blood, pretense's.***SPOILERS*** With Capt. Barnaby getting the jump on Barkis' plan to rob the bank from chickened out, in him scared of being charged with Kellogg's murder, bank robber Marty Kusalich, Adam Williams, the stage was set for a police ambush at the bank robbery site. The plan worked to perfecting with only one slight hitch; Bank teller Miss Easton, Christie White, ending up being kidnapped by Barkis & Monty the only survivors of the blotched bank robbery team. That set things up for Capt. Barnaby and his men to track down the two escaped bank robbers who were only caught with the help of their escaped kidnapped victim the almost legally blind, after accidentally breaking her glasses, Miss Easton.

Vice Squad takes a documentary style approach to a single day in a police captain's life and what he might encounter.Of course the murder of a police officer doesn't ever qualify as an ordinary day, but even on those days when an entire force is mobilized looking for a cop killer, still more mundane matters intervene.Edward G. Robinson was in his B film period which is roughly between All My Sons and The Ten Commandments. Still Robinson always brought a certain class to the films he was doing and Vice Squad is no exception.Second billed in the cast is Paulette Goddard who is a madam at a bordello. She was on a blacklist of sorts herself at the time, not for politics, but because she had antagonized the powerful Cecil B. DeMille during the shooting of The Unconquered. Her career was winding down, but she would be marrying Erich Maria Remarque and be leaving the screen shortly for Switzerland.Goddard and Robinson have a nice bond between them. It's obvious he lets her operate because she can be most valuable as a snitch in a pinch. In fact she does come through with some information that starts the case being cracked.Funny though, ten years earlier Robinson and Goddard as co-stars would have commanded an A list budget, even five years earlier. Hollywood could be very fickle at times. Still for a B police drama, Vice Squad has an impressive cast list of quality players. Best in the film is Porter Hall, a two timing funeral director who Robinson knows saw something, but won't crack because he was spending a night with his girlfriend instead of being out of town as he told his wife. How they manage to keep him 'in the system' so to speak is really quite ingenious much to the exasperation of his lawyer, Barry Kelley who runs a close second to Hall.Mixed in with the hunt for a cop killer are more routine matters like exposing a phony Italian count, dealing with Percy Helton's imaginary crimes and a TV interview for publicity's sake. All in the life of a Vice Squad captain.Fans of Edward G. Robinson and Paulette Goddard will like what they see and Vice Squad is a nice tightly scripted and edited police drama.

Vice Squad starts off like a sip of espresso: dark, strong, with a scorched aftertaste. But soon it grows lukewarm. It had the makings of a solid ‘50s crime drama but dilutes them with quirky human-interest vignettes that bear no relation to the central story. Less film noir than a dutiful police procedural, it looks like an attempt to reprise the more intense Detective Story of two years earlier.Still, it's not a bad movie, if humdrum, centering on the killing of a cop by two members (Ed Binns, Lee Van Cleef) of a gang planning a bank job. All the plot strands lead to Chief of Detectives Edward G. Robinson (did anyone ever enunciate English more precisely?). Among them are witness Porter Hall, reluctant to get involved because he was seeing his mistress (Joan Vohs); his big-shot, big-mouthed attorney, Barry Kelley; ritzy madam Paulette Goddard, deputized to pick up information from clients she and her girls `escort;' reluctant stoolie Jay Adler; and gang member Adam Williams, who's losing the nerve to go through with the heist. Populating the more remote subplots are Percy Helton, who thinks he's pursued by `television shadows' and a phony Italian `Count' pulled in for marriage bunco. The bank job comes off, but not quite as planned, as plainclothes police are planted on the scene. But Binns and Van Cleef manage to nab a hostage....The busy plot advances clearly enough (despite some lapses in continuity: The mistress' name is `Vicki' in an address book but `Vickie' on her mailbox). The most arresting part of Vice Squad are the scams, subterfuges and outright blackmail the police use to pressure witnesses to talk. They're presented not as expedient short-cuts to find a policeman's murderers but as routine – business as usual. In that regard it reflects the super-patriotic climate of America during the Red-Scare years, though there's not a Communist in the movie, let alone any suggestion that officers of the law may be overstepping their bounds.

Excellent cast. Paulette Goddard, basic minor role but still has the oomph. E.G. Robinson never ceases to amaze me, he is always the main force in all the movies he is in, I never tire of seeing him on film. The film did a very good job of developing the day to day business of a major city police station without making the police to appear as super human beings.