Dillinger (1945)

Dull and dated

Monogram's 1945 Dillinger is a dreary little B-movie that ignores not just period detail but also anything and everything even remotely interesting about the real-life Public Enemy No. 1 in favor of tired fictional clichés and plenty of stock footage from Fritz Lang's You Only Live Once (which completely stumps John Milius on the audio commentary: unaware of their provenance, he seems to think they're sequences they ran out of money to finish). It does offer a chance to see a young Lawrence Tierney when he still had a full head of hair, but despite some interesting credits (music by Dimitri Tiomkin, an inexplicably Oscar-nominated screenplay by Philip Yordan) that's pretty much all you can say for it. January 18, 2008

Holy Guacamole!!

Lawrence Tierney is one bad dude. This is an excellent crime-noir, introducing Lawrence Tierney and unleashing him on the unsuspecting public. Mr Tierney stars as John Dillinger in this film of his rise and fall. Dillinger starts on his life of crime at the hands of a b-girl. He gets sent up the river where he falls in with a group of professional bank thieves. The leader, "Specs", disrespects our Man, and you know where that leads. Be afraid! There is a lot of implied violence which is very chillingly portrayed. The movie is beautiful to look at and Mr Tierney is all cold nasty, sexy rage. Recommended. June 10, 2007

Fast-Moving, With A Real Thug Playing A Famous Thug!

This movie has several big things going for it: its short, fast-moving and just plain entertaining. How much more do you want? Also, Lawrence Tierney was made for gangster/film noir movies. He looks the part, acts the part, and was a thug in real life, too. Who better than to portray famous criminal John Dillinger as a cold-blooded killer?

This was Tierney's starring debut and it was a good vehicle for him. I also enjoyed Edmund Lowe as the gang boss prior to Tierney taking over. I enjoyed the supporting cast, too: Anne Jeffreys, Elisha Cook Jr., Eduardo Cianelli and Marc Lawrence. All of them add to this film.

I was glad they concentrated on the crime part of the film and didn't go crazy with a sappy romance. However, I am sorry Jeffreys wasn't on screen more often. She had the '40s look, if I ever saw it. April 24, 2006

Fast paced action, but the DVD quality was sub par

This review is for the 2005 Warner Brothers DVD.

This film is about the real life bank robber John Dillinger who is arguably the most notorious robber in the history of American and earned the nickname "Public Enemy #1". From my brief research on the internet, the movie appears to be relatively true to form. From the early `30s until his death in 1934, Dillinger wreaked havoc across America with his brutal bank robberies and daring prison escapes.

The film itself moves fast, but is only 70 minutes long. There is little character development and the action is continuous and rarely dull. Lawrence Tierney stars as John Dillinger. This was his screen acting debut and he does little to set the acting world on fire. Even in scenes of major confrontation, Tierney seems expressionless and lacks emotional body language. Perhaps this was by design by the director. But if you are fan of vintage gangster films, I'm confident that you will be entertained and pleased with action and drama.

The DVD was remastered but not restored and unfortunately there was a significant amount of film damage. There were five or six scenes with at least 3 or 4 seconds of severely damaged footage. The remastering helped make the picture look sharp but tiny specs of deterioration were still prevalent throughout the film, but that wasn't a major deal compared to the noticeably larger scratches. Warner has historically been one of the better studios for film restoration and they obviously decided to not fix up this film. Due to the limited market of a DVD like this, I'm sure the payoff wasn't there to restore an entire movie, but if they would have at least fixed the severely damaged frames, that would have been sufficient for me.

PLEASE NOTE: Before buying this DVD, consider buying the Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 2 which contains this movie plus four other highly recommended movies at a very reasonable price.


Movie: B-

DVD Quality: C July 27, 2005

Lawrence Tierney Rules!!!

Yes, this film feels like a diatribe. It's probably less factual than the film version of John Dillinger's exploits that director John Milius made in the seventies. So why do I recommend this film over Milius' more polished account? Well, this film in a campy, over-the-top way is just so entertaining. Secondly, Lawrence Tierney in the title role is such a magnetic screen presence. His tough ferocity keeps the film's campier elements in check and grounds it in some semblance of reality. There's also a good supporting cast here with gangster veterans Marc Lawrence and Elisha Cook Jr. (seems like he's in all these noir-gangster flicks) on hand. The story is told here crisply and in an economical 70 minutes so if you have an hour plus to kill there's worse ways to do it. Oh, John, if only you had the two bucks to pay for the drinks! July 11, 2005

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