Inside Job (1946) User Reviews (6)

An enjoyable and watchable B-movie.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 4 April 2018]

"Inside Job" is an enjoyable B-movie, a second feature film that is quickly and cheaply made. This is not an insult...just the style movie that it was intended to be. But despite what some thing, Bs weren't necessarily bad films...and this one definitely shows that.

When the story begins, Eddie Norton (Alan Curtis) is working as a demonstrator for a department store. However, when he's spotted by Bart Madden (Preston Foster), he's recognized as a former member of Madden's criminal gang...and Bart insists Eddie join them in their next caper. But Eddie decides to instead rob the department store himself...cutting Madden out completely. Now Eddie has the police AND an angry mobster out gunning for him.

The reason this film was enjoyable was seeing Eddie's wife (Ann Rutherford) and the plot involving the neighbor kid. It gave the film greater depth and was quite enjoyable. Not a must see but certainly a nice little time passer.

Naturally something always goes wrong, but you'll never know what until it's too late...

[clanciai · 7/10 · 11 October 2019]

This is a B-feature trifle which could have been turned into something great and ineteresting, because there are many twists to this tale. The main character (Alan Curtis) has been in jail and makes an effort to go straight, when an old criminal colleague turns up and offers him a job and actually forces him to accept it by blackmail. This is the tragedy. His wife (Ann Rutherford) sees no other choice than to accept supporting him, while he intends to take his revenge on the partner (Preston Foster) by taking all the loot himself. The caper almost succeeds, it seems to good to be true, but then there are some human factors turning up, like a kite getting stuck in a window, a boy that will not be disposed of, a dog is involved, the boy proves to have lost his mother while his father turns out to be a policeman... It's an interesting moral tale, and you might not be in complete agreement with the judge's final verdict, but the law is the law. It's allright for an interesting entertainment.

Mostly forgettable. But what an ending!

[friedlandea · 6/10 · 10 April 2019]

This little noir has all the hallmarks of a poverty row quickie, except it was made by a major studio, Universal. The cast includes A-list veterans: Ann Rutherford, Alan Curtis, Preston Foster, in supporting roles Milburn Stone, Samuel S. Hinds, Joe Sawyer, Howard Freeman (memorable two years later in "The Snake Pit" shaking his finger at Olivia de Havilland). Marc Lawrence pops in for a couple of scenes. I can only assume Universal assigned them to do their best for the back end of a double-bill. They walk through the material honestly and professionally. Ann Rutherford does make something of her role. She is, as usual, appealing and sympathetic. Everything proceeds routinely, until the end. The ending redeems the whole film. It actually makes it worth watching.

Claire and Eddie, the protagonists (Ann Rutherford and Alan Curtis) pull off a heist. The police are looking for them, as also is the criminal godfather (Preston Foster) who commissioned the job and would like to appropriate the swag. They hide, holed up in an apartment. They become friendly with their unsuspecting neighbors. There's a cute little boy, Skipper. They rescue his kite from the fire-escape and mend it. They wash his dog. They chat with his amiable caregiver (played by the great radio actress Ruby Dandridge) and his policeman father (Joe Sawyer). On the eve of their planned escape, of course, the godfather locates them. But he bumps into the resident cop. Bang, bang. Godfather is plugged fatally, cop seriously. Claire and Eddie give up their chance to get away. They care for the wounded officer until the other cops come and arrest them. Then the final scene. In the courtroom, they await the judge's (Samuel S. Hinds) sentence. Surely, he will be lenient - extenuating circumstances and all. He looks stern. But he speaks compassionately. "You have committed crime" (I paraphrase) "but you have shown decency. You have saved the life of an officer of the law." Therefore - he sentences them to the maximum. Sorry, losers, society does not admit pity. What a sublime message! It's so jarring it's beautiful. It's so didactic it's wonderful. O theater audience beware, before you finish your popcorn. Delve not into crime. Law is inflexible. We who rule know no mercy. Marvelous! (Parole, you're thinking? Their only indictable crime is robbery, not even armed robbery, since no weapon was used. But I wouldn't bet on the parole board in this jurisdiction. Here even the Monopoly games have no get-out-of-jail-free cards. You can't save your little top-hat or flat-iron here.)

Inside Outside

[boblipton · 4/10 · 22 April 2018]

When Preston Foster spots Alan Curtis as a mannequin in a store window, he threatens him with exposure as an ex-con unless he steals the Christmas receipts and turns them over to him. Instead, Curtis takes the money and hides out with wife Ann Rutherford, with the cops and Foster after him ... and police captain Joe Sawyer's son, Jimmy Moss, barging into the apartment every minute.

It's the second sound remake of Tod Browning's OUTSIDE THE LAW, with all the Browning insanity stripped away to reveal a straightforward crime drama with a gooey center around obnoxious kid actor Moss. Without the Browning insanity, all the dangling sexuality and yearning just leads nowhere, with the story stripped to its bare minimum as motivations become obscure and people make life-changing decisions rather easily. Definitely not a story that fits the strictures of the Production Code and a director like Jean Yarborough.

Fritz Lang did it much better

[F Gwynplaine MacIntyre · 4/10 · 25 February 2004]

'Inside Job' is a semi-noir drama, notably for one reason only: this film is the very last credit on the CV of cult-film figure Tod Browning. Although he had a serious drinking problem (partly because he took advantage of free beer shipments for life, a gift from the president of Coors Brewing, whom he had befriended), Browning was fortunate enough to have invested his money well, so that he no longer needed to work when his creative talents failed. After directing 'Miracles for Sale', the original story treatment for 'Inside Job' (sold to Universal) was Browning's last script sale.

Certain themes recurred like obsessions throughout Browning's career as a screenwriter/director. He was fascinated by physical deformity, spiritualism, carnival side-shows and confidence schemes. Several of his best films depict an elaborate 'caper' crime. 'Inside Job' is a straightforward caper film, and it suffers from the absence of the elaborate setpieces and improbable motivations that propel so many of Browning's films.

Although Tod Browning wrote the original treatment for this film, it doesn't do him credit. There are some good things in the storyline of 1946's 'Inside Job' ... but all of those elements were present in 'You and Me', a much better film directed by Fritz Lang in 1938 for Paramount.

A married couple are both ex-convicts; both of them work in a department store that has a policy of hiring and rehabilitating ex-convicts. The husband and wife are both trying to go straight, but they fall afoul of a gangster who pressures the husband into participating in a robbery of the department store. This synopsis describes 'Inside Job' exactly ... and it ALSO describes the earlier and better 'You and Me', which adds a few details that aren't in the Browning version. In 'You and Me', the marriage between the lead characters is complicated by the fact that the wife hasn't told her husband that she's still serving parole ... so he doesn't realise that their marriage isn't legal. Most significantly, 'You and Me' is a semi-musical film with elaborate 'sangspiel' sequences by Kurt Weill, whilst 'Inside Job' is a straightforward caper film that hovers in the doorway of noir territory but never quite crosses the threshold.

All of the good parts of 'Inside Job' are so similar to 'You and Me' that I've difficulty believing Tod Browning had not seen that film before he wrote 'Inside Job'. Or possibly the blame should go to Browning's long-time collaborator, Garrett Fort.

SPOILERS COMING. The set-up of 'Inside Job' is marginally different from that of 'You and Me' in that husband Eddie Norton *and* his ex-con wife Claire both participate in the robbery, and they do so unwillingly ... because they're being blackmailed by villain Bart Madden. Tod Browning had a penchant for twist endings that often squandered any meagre plausibility that his plot lines possessed. In this case, the twist ending for 'Inside Job' is one of his more plausible ones, and it deviates from the ending of 'You and Me'. Eddie and Claire pretend to participate willingly in the robbery, but they actually contrive to summon the police. After Madden is shot dead, Mr and Mrs Norton turn themselves in as his accomplices.

Despite its similarity to 'You and Me', 'Inside Job' could have been a good film. Preston Foster is good as the villain, but Alan Curtis is bland as ex-con Ed Norton (shouldn't he be working in the sewer, and living upstairs over Ralph Kramden?) while Ann Rutherford is even worse as Ed Norton's wife Trixie, I mean Claire. Veteran character actors Joe Sawyer and Samuel S. Hinds give dependable performances here, which don't vary in any way from the typecast roles they've essayed elsewhere. Bit-part actor Oliver Blake shows up briefly. Blake impresses me in films that give him more than a few lines of dialogue, but when he has only a walk-on role (as here) his presence is distracting: Blake's facial structure is so unusual that he inevitably calls attention to himself even when playing brief 'stick' parts that aren't meant to divert us from the main action.

The biggest problem with 'Inside Job' is its lacklustre direction by Jean Yarbrough, who probably holds the record for churning out more bad movies and inept television episodes than any other director. In the game of bridge, a 13-card hand with no high cards is called a Yarborough ... and Jean Yarbrough had no trumps. During his long career, he directed a lot of performers whose work I admire, but they invariably did their worst work in Jean Yarbrough's films.

It's a pity that 'Inside Job' wasn't directed by Tod Browning, even though he was having personal problems at this point in his life; a Browning version of this material would have been much more interesting than what Yarbrough did with it. I'll rate this movie 4 points out of 10. Skip this limp caper and watch Fritz Lang's 'You and Me' instead, which rates 10 out of 10.

This inside Job somehow gets off the track.

[mark.waltz · 3/10 · 11 December 2019]

Apparently the third version of a Universal film written by Tod Browning in the early 1930s, this updated version has a film Noir atmosphere that starts off good but ends up rather distracted and convoluted in the middle section. What is at first a generic crime drama that somehow becomes a Christmas family film and suddenly turned back to crime with a shootout that serves no purpose to what the audience has been watching for the past 20 minutes. Alan Curtis and Ann Rutherford are ex-con who are hiding from gangster Preston Foster who wants Curtis to help him in robbing the department store that he has gotten a job in.

The sequences involving police officer Joe Sawyer's young son Jimmy Moss getting read The Christmas Story by cook Ruby dandridge are supposed to bring in a feel-good aura to the film but are a distraction, and when the crime element turns up again, it begins to feel like you're watching two different films. This of course was better done as the Fritz Lang film "You and Me" starring George Raft and Sylvia Sidney, even though this is not an official remake. As directed by Jean Yarbrough, this is a bottom of the line Universal picture that left me perplexed and feeling like I just wasted 70 minutes of valuable time.