Five Star Final (1932) - Mervyn LeRoy

Oh sweet lord this film is fantastic. It can get melodramatic and for a long time you get a feeling this will be another badly dated overemphasized piece of clunky early sound cinema. However the more the film progresses the more fantastic it gets. When drama hits, it hits hard. LeRoy's direction is nothing short of brilliant, with the same penchant for off screen space and a quietly mobile camera that made Lewis Milestone's earlier Front Page so vital. Edward G. Robinson takes awhile to shine here, but once he is given the opportunity to let out some emotion he instantly has us on his side. He even makes us forget what a horrible act he has comitted. Unfortunately Five Star Final has never been released on VHS or DVD, so finding it is a supreme problem. However it is one of the most exciting of early pictures, even outperforming LeRoy and Robinson's now landmark Little Caesar. The connection can be made that the newspaper men aren't much different from gangsters, they're responsible for murders, they're motivated by money, and are amoral. Some characters in this film are stereotypes and used for a specific role in society rather than as a character, but with the concise nature of the plot, you can't slight the director for oversimplifying in a few instances. The film is also a point of curiosity for another supporting turn from Borris Karloff, before movie stardom hit him.

*Five Star Final was nominated for best picture.