Dillinger (1945)

The greatest movie ever!

Absolutely Fantastic

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

The part of John Dillinger must have been red meat for Lawrence Tierney, the baddest of Hollywood's bad boys. A notorious brawler and sociopath, Tierney seems the embodiment of the erstwhile Public Enemy #1 and plays it to the hilt. This was his first starring turn and is remarkably at his ease in the part. In all subsequent roles he was belligerent and humorless, and I can't recall ever seeing him crack a smile."The Lad In Red" is lovely Anne Jeffreys, and the gang members are all familiar faces; Elisha Cook, Jr., Eduardo Cianelli, Marc Lawrence, and in a change from his normally sophisticated roles, Edmund Lowe as the gang leader. The picture is very entertaining and was made by Monogram, a charter member of Poverty Row. Here they've pulled out all the stops and produced a top notch gangster flick. If you're a fan of 'cops and robbers' movies you won't be disappointed. I've put my star rating in the heading as the website no longer prints them.

Amazing that 60+ years ago the low-budget Monogram Pictures made this Dillinger movie 9 times better than Universal's 2009 sorry looking mess, "Public Enemies." This 1945 movie grabs you from the opening credits and keeps your interest for the entire 70 minutes. That's right, 70 minutes. There's no need to pad this story into a 2 hour + boring mess.To begin with, and all-important, it's true that Lawrence Tierney was born to play Dillinger. He's perfect. Johnny Depp maybe was born to play Jack Sparrow, but he stumbles around looking stupid in the 2009 film.Just everything about the 1945 clicks like clockwork. Just one example is the simple-but-effective shootout at the Biograph Theater. The 2009 film ought get special honors for incredible multiple layers of Bad Film-making 101. In the 1945 gut-level film we have a bored and broke Dillinger taking his girl to the neighborhood movie for a few laughs. In the old days people went in and out of movie theaters all day, not at starting time. Thus when Dillinger steps outside there are just two people leaving, not the 500 marching out in "Public Enemies." So the FBI can easily spray him with bullets without hitting other folks.This fine Monogram Picture can be found on Netflix and other places. No need to settle for today's silly trash.

Dillinger (1945) *** (out of 4) Incredibly fast moving Monogram flick tells the story of John Dillinger (Lawrence Tierney) who rises to the top only to fall to the bottom again. The main thing here is the performance from Tierney who really captures that bad guy image. He doesn't play it as one of those funny guy roles but instead he plays it for a mean s.o.b. and he nails every single second of the film. The direction is nice throughout and there's some good style even with the low budget. Low budget filmmakers should certainly watch this just to see what you can do with a small budget. The final ten minutes really don't work too well but everything else is pretty good.

*** Slight spoiler in fourth paragraph. *** A poverty-row gangster flick that, for much of its 70 minutes, rivals the best Warner Bros. had to offer. The movie plays fast and loose with history, mixing fact and fiction at will, but almost to be expected when dealing with Dillinger and at least this film doesn't masquerade as a documentary like so much of the infotainment on TV these days.Blessed with matinée idol's looks and an ex-con's temperament Lawrence Tierney was the perfect actor to play Dillinger. I'd seen a couple of his other, lesser, films before checking this one out and I honestly didn't think much of him as an actor. He has screen presence and shoots a furious glance like nobody's business, but beyond that he'd always seemed limited to me. In Dillinger he proved me wrong, obviously his swagger was just right for the character, but he really does give a superb performance. At times he brings to mind James Cagney as Cody Jarrett in White Heat (which wouldn't be made until 1949).The rest of the cast is good as well, it's tempting to call the familiar Elisha Cook, Jr. the stand-out but really the members of the gang all fill their roles admirably. Anne Jeffreys plays Dillinger's fictional moll Helen Rogers, unfortunately her character is really just a sketch. If this had been an "A picture" she surely would have gotten more screen-time.*** Spoiler? *** Is it really a spoiler to say that John Dillinger was shot to death by FBI agents in an alley behind Chicago's Biograph Theater on July 22, 1934? I found the end quite disappointing, it builds to a false climax and then maunders for about ten minutes before unceremoniously disposing of the "hero" at the correct time and place. Of course just about everyone knows it's coming, but in my opinion the editor could have added a little more tension. I suppose in '45 they were still worried about glamourizing Dillinger, but these qualms didn't seem to slow them throughout the rest of the picture.All in all, a tremendous B-movie that hints at what Lawrence Tierney could have been if his many mis-steps hadn't gotten in the way.