Review of The Fall Guy

Needless to say, not every old movie's a good movie. That certainly goes for this antique. It's afflicted with too many pitfalls of early talkies. Namely, florid acting, shouted lines, and poor staging (probably to meld with the microphone). Add a generally cheap production that seldom leaves faded interiors, and there's not much to entertain the eye, either. The story itself is pretty routine—an unemployed guy feels emasculated so he hooks up with a bootlegger who uses him as an innocent fall guy. Ten years later, with a different director, the material might have worked. Here, however, the exaggerated stagecraft is at best curious, that is, when not plain annoying. On this aspect, reviewer planktonrules's remarks are generally spot-on.

(I'm still wondering whether the problem of Johnny's unemployment is a result of the Great Depression, which started about the time this film was shot. If so, the 1929 collapse is curiously not mentioned.)