The Hoodlum (1951)

Waste of time

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The constraints within which filmmakers have to operate when they're working on a low budget can often produce surprisingly good results and this is most often seen in crime dramas where qualities such as grittiness, realism and pace can be produced without any need for high expenditure. "The Hoodlum" is a case in point, as it describes the inevitable downfall of a criminal who, from the outset, is clearly beyond redemption and the way in which his story is told displays all the aforementioned qualities plus plenty of tension.As a youngster, Vincent Lubeck (Lawrence Tierney) had a long history of involvement in petty crime before being sentenced to ten years in prison for armed robbery. After having served five years of his sentence, the parole board at the state penitentiary meets to consider his case and despite the strong views of the Warden (who considers him to be unfit to be released on parole); the board approves the criminal's release after having listened to an impassioned appeal from Lubeck's mother.When Vincent returns home to live with his mother, he's required under the terms of his parole to work in the gas station which his brother Johnny (Edward Tierney) had bought using the insurance money from his father's death. Vincent shows no appreciation of what Johnny or his mother have done on his behalf and doesn't acknowledge how well Johnny had done in building up his business and buying the family a new home. He also dislikes working in the gas station and displays a bad attitude to its customers. This naturally upsets Johnny who, unlike his mother and his naïve girlfriend Rosa (Allene Roberts), sees his brother exactly for what he is. Rosa's attempts to build bridges between the brothers leads to her getting seduced by Vincent and eventually committing suicide after discovering she's pregnant and then being very firmly rebuffed when she asked Vincent to marry her.Vincent notices the collections that are made by an armoured van from the Fidelity Bank which is located on the opposite side of the street from the gas station and dates Eileen (Marjorie Riordan), the bank's secretary, in order to get some more information about the regular cash shipments. Then, after meeting up with some of his old associates, he masterminds a heist and a very imaginative way of escaping with the loot. His quest for easy money, however, soon leads to some undesirable results, both during and after the heist.Vincent Lubeck's character is very straightforward as he's completely unrepentant about anything he's done in the past, never intends, even for a second, to go straight and is only focused on getting easy money. He thinks that the intense bitterness and anger that's such a powerful part of his make-up is attributable to his family's experience of having lived for years in a home that was close to the city dump and sees the acquisition of a lot of money as being the only thing that can clear the stink that he lived with for so many years. He's vicious, volatile and amoral and brings nothing but misery to his family.Lawrence Tierney does a great job of portraying the sheer intensity and explosive nature of this selfish sociopath in a style that perfectly complements the fast-moving way in which the on-screen action is delivered. It's these qualities that ultimately make the movie so enjoyable and help to compensate for the poor acting of some other members of the cast.

The title of the picture is short and to the point, the film is appropriately crafted for viewers with a disciplined attention span who just want to get it over with. Lawrence Tierney is all menace here as Vincent Lubeck, freed on parole after a five year stretch against the better judgment of a warden and parole board who've allowed themselves to be influenced by the convincing sob story of a mother who's duty it is to stand up for her son. We'll see how this relationship turns out later, but for now, real life brother Ed Tierney rides to the rescue with a job offer at his filling station with the kind of upward mobility that comes with being located across the street from a bank. I had a sense that pumping gas wasn't Vince's forte when he doused a customer's car with a couple of gallons when he complained about the service. It would have been a worse career move had he been a smoker.Vince does his level best to convince us that he has no redeeming qualities whatsoever by chewing up and spitting out his brother's girlfriend, leading her to suicide following a rape resulting in pregnancy. As an equal opportunity womanizer, he moves in on a bank secretary (Marjorie Riordan) to firm up plans for the big heist. I always get a kick out of these era films where the crime in progress is the subject of newspaper headlines in real time, a feat that took at least another half century to realize with the advent of the internet.You can do better than "The Hoodlum" if masterful crime drama is your thing, but for pure sleaze factor, it doesn't get much better than this. Had the elder Tierney cracked a smile even once I would have been disappointed. This one is pure hard boiled and as gritty as they come, and even though it may not stand up to serious scrutiny, how bad can a film be when it winds up at the city dump.

I read on IMDb that a new restored version of this film was just released. However, my review is based only on the public domain version--which may or may not be roughly the same picture. How much restoration was done is unknown to me.The film stars Lawrence Tierney and one of his real-life brothers. For some very, very fascinating reading, read up on Tierney's life--he was an incredibly dangerous sort of guy--and a lot like the sociopathic character he played in this film. Now that Tierney has passed away, I have no trouble saying this...otherwise I'd keep my mouth shut, as even as an elderly guy he was quite the unpredictable terror! But, I should point out, that because Tierney was such a screwball, he was able to play some of the most menacing and convincing criminals in noir films such as "Born to Kill" and "Reservoir Dogs".Lawrence Tierney plays an angry man who was just paroled. Instead of learning from his mistakes, he has an incredibly bad attitude and blames everyone for his problems...everyone but himself. It's obvious that despite his family trying to help him go straight, this hoodlum is determined to return to a life of crime. After all, in his mind the world owes him something and working hard at a real job is for suckers! This unrelenting badness made the character terrific and dark even by film noir standards. He destroys his brother's girlfriend, kills with no compunction and attacks everyone around him--making him very memorable. As a result, the film takes a rather ordinary story idea with a small budget and makes it much more. It's gritty and far more realistic than a typical film of the era--and well worth seeing for fans of noir.If you do see the film, some particularly noteworthy scenes are Tierney slapping a woman as well as the final scene between him and his horrified mother and brother. Great stuff! By the way, in an interesting bit of casting, Lawrence Tierney's real-life brother, Edward, plays his brother in the film as well!

This is typical but quite entertaining B movie fare. Well, not completely typical because the main character of such fare is generally more sympathetic than Lawrence Tierney is here. He's a guy you love to hate as he gets paroled thanks to his sweet and loving mother and then proceeds to be a total heel, raping and impregnating his sister-in-law, robbing a bank and just an overall not-nice guy. He doesn't even evoke sympathy at his dying mother's bedside and that's one of the perverse charms of the film. The ending in a dump is quite satisfying and prompts a feeling of good riddance to bad rubbish. This is a typically short little B film, cheaply made, ludicrous at times, but fun to watch and one which will be appreciated by fans of 40's and 50's 2nd features.