This was a crusading against corruption thing, with performances that didn't quite hit the mark. It's worth noting that Louis Calhern plays a crooked lawyer in much the same way he would almost two decades later in The Asphalt Jungle, but the character here is a smirking, one-dimensional weasel.
I was going to give this a "watchable" but about two thirds of the way through, there is a scene in which they give Eric Linden the third degree (having recently seen ARE THESE OUR CHILDREN?, I thought he deserved it), when suddenly a light bulb hanging from the ceiling is set wobbling, the shadows come out and you remember that Karl Freund is the DP. Freund transforms this average picture into something very good. With ur-noir techniques.
I was going to give this a "watchable" but about two thirds of the way through, there is a scene in which they give Eric Linden the third degree (having recently seen ARE THESE OUR CHILDREN?, I thought he deserved it), when suddenly a light bulb hanging from the ceiling is set wobbling, the shadows come out and you remember that Karl Freund is the DP. Freund transforms this average picture into something very good. With ur-noir techniques.