Johnny Eager (1941)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Wonderful character development!

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

The gangster Johnny Eager (Robert Taylor) has a scheme to pose of taxi driver to his parole officer Mr. Verne (Henry O'Neill). However he is unsuccessfully trying to get the license to open a dog racing track. Johnny is a ruthless and handsome man and his only friend and partner is the alcoholic Jeff Hartnett (Van Heflin). When Mr. Verne visits Johnny at home, he brings the social assistant Lisbeth Bard (Lana Turner), who is the daughter of the District Attorney John Benson Farrell (Edward Arnold) that is Johnny's greatest enemy and responsible for sending him to the prison. Johnny seduces Lisbeth that falls in love with him. But Johnny is a heartless man and lures Lisbeth making her believe that she killed a man to protect Johnny. Then he blackmails Farrell to get his permit to open his dog track. Meanwhile Lisbeth is deeply affected by her love for Johnny and for the death of a man. When her former boyfriend Jimmy Courtney (Robert Sterling) offers all his money to Johnny to leave the country with Lisbeth, he has difficulties to understand Jimmy's attitude. But when he visits Lisbeth, he begins to understand the meaning of love and sacrifice. What will Johnny do?"Johnny Eager" is a great film-noir, with the story of a selfish cold- blooded gangster that learns the meaning of love. Robert Taylor is perfect in the role of a notorious and manipulative gangster and Van Heflin has magnificent performance in the role of his only friend. The twenty-year old Lana Turner is amazingly beautiful. The story and the screenplay are excellent with top-notch direction of Mervyn LeRoy. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "Estrada Proibida" ("Forbidden Road")

This is a pretty good gangster film from MGM, but it certainly doesn't qualify as classic film noir and fans of that genre will be disappointed. There are some noir elements (crime drama, set in big city, a merry band of criminals) but the critical elements are missing. Taylor (who does a good job trying to make viewers forget about "Camille" and "Magnificent Obsession") doesn't fit the profile of the man lured by his own greed or bad judgment into the underworld, nor is he lured and betrayed by a femme fatale. On a more superficial level, there are no rainy scenes nor does the camera work have those shadows and unusual angles we come to associate with film noir Put aside the idea that you're watching film nor and it's an enjoyable film, though a bit too long for my tastes.

Handsome, quick on his feet and quicker on the draw gangster Johnny Eager (Taylor) meets the hottest-of-hot young Hollywood dames, Lana Turner, here the District Attorney's daughter. Johnny needs a betting licence from the D.A. but with Johnny's record it ain't gonna happen. As always Johnny's got an angle - this time it ain't pretty at all. But has Johnny run into an acquaintance he ain't seen for a long long while: his conscience? Or is it just his pal (Van Heflin) who's started yapping like some bible-puncher making him on edge? Johnny slugs him to shut him up but his pal still wont stop yapping. Or is it his conscience that's screwing things up? Maybe he just ain't got one? Maybe.This movie motors like a hot rod with the pedal to the metal - with three people doing the steering! It sure is going fast but for sure it ain't going far. Johnny's had his crashes before but this time is different. This time there ain't gonna be too many survivors.Robert Taylor and Lana Turner were never better - they were both young and hot and riding in this souped-up racer of a movie. Yet oddly it was Van Heflin who got the Oscar for his role as the drunken, maudlin muttering voice of conscience, a role he was to make his own and reprised from then on. Clearly, the studio understood that the public of the day was not ready for a raw amoral sociopath as a hero and needed the authorial moral commentary that the Van Heflin character provided to licence their lascivious enjoyment. Today the Van Heflin character appears so insufferable that the public would instead be more likely to be willing Johnny to shoot him - and it would have been Robert Taylor who received the Oscar.

I love the film noir genre and thoroughly enjoyed this fast paced if far removed from reality morality tale on the life and times of reformed (or is he?) gangster Johnny Eager, played at a fair lick by Robert Taylor. The plot fairly flies along, revolving around blackmail, gambling, alcoholism and even strong suggestions of homo - eroticism in Van Heflin's turn as Horatio to Taylor's Hamlet (or is that Iago to Othello?). Anyhow, Lana Turner sizzles on the screen in one of her first starring roles while Edward Arnold does his stock authority figure, this time on the side of good, unlike his role in "Mr Smith goes to Washington". Heflin deserved his Oscar for his booze - soaked portrayal of Eager's side-kick and conscience Jeff Hartnett, but Taylor and Turner deserve top - marks too. Taylor stays in character brilliantly the whole way through and Turner would tempt any crook back to the straight and narrow. The director eschews camera flourishes a la Hitchcock or Lang but keeps the pace up and captures excellently the mobster neighbourhood of cheap clip joints and gambling dens. Recommended.