Criminal Lawyer (1951)

So much average

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

"Criminal Lawyer" is a "B" list programmer that is saved by the performance of Pat O'Brien in the lead role. O'Brien plays criminal lawyer James Reagan who wins his cases in dramatic fashion by employing unethical but legal tricks. He also has a penchant for the bottle.After getting Vincent Cheney (Mickey Knox), the brother of gangster Harry Cheney (Douglas Fowley) off, Reagan announces that he is giving up his practice with the expectation of becoming a judge. He turns over the firm to his associate Clark Sommers (Robert Shayne) who has been doing all of the preparatory work leading up to Reagan's dramatic entrances at the end of their trials.Reagan is denied the judgeship by high end lawyers led by Tucker Bourne (Carl Benton Reid) and D.A. Walter Medford (Jerome Cowan) on the grounds that he uses unethical means to win his cases. Disappointed, Reagan turns to the bottle. However, Bourne is forced to come hat in hand to plead with Reagan to defend his nephew Bill Webber (Daryl Hickman) of a manslaughter charge involving a traffic fatality.Reagan reluctantly takes the case and gets the young man off. While preparing to celebrate, Reagan is confronted at his front door by the widow of the man killed in the Webber case, Mrs. Johnson (Mary Alan Hokanson) who shows him the effects of having freed her husband's killer. Reagan devastated, disappears into the bottle and cannot be found.Reagan's man Moose Hendricks (Mike Mazurki) fearing the worst goes to confront mobster Harry Cheney. Cheney however turns up murdered and Moose is charged with the crime. Loyal secretary Maggie Pewel (Jane Wyatt), gofer Sam Kutler (Marvin Caplan) and receptionist Gloria Lydendecker (Mary Castle) try to locate Reagan while Sommers begins to try the case. Suddenly a disheveled Reagan turns up and..............................................Pat O'Brien had a long and varied career. He played mostly priests and cops in his Warner Bros. films of the 30s and 40s but goes in a different direction this time around. He portrayal of the boozy lawyer is one of his best. Jane Wyatt has little to do but be ever faithful to her boss. There appears to be a one way attraction going on, however Reagan does not seem interested. His relationship with Moose is something else again and since this was 1951, we can only speculate. The identity of the real murderer is not to hard to figure out which detracts from the film's dramatic finish.Jane Wyatt would soon go on to appear in the long running TV series "Father Knows Best". Another TV veteran, Amanda Blake appears briefly as a receptionist. Louis Jean Heydt appears as a court reporter.

Pat O'Brien stars in this B film programmer as a most successful criminal attorney well aware that he's called shyster behind his back and occasionally to his face. As we see in the film this man has a lot of tricks up his sleeve to get clients off. But he'd really like to become a judge and leave it all behind. His skills are way to valuable and the best scenes in the film are those with the extralegal methods he uses to gain acquittals. He's got a nice team of associates including secretary Jane Wyatt, office boy Marvin Kaplan, and general factotum Mike Mazurki. He also has an ambitious and treacherous associate in Robert Shayne who wants to take over.O'Brien's unsavory reputation has also kept him from the bench as the Bar Assocation and the white shoe lawyers that run it like Carl Benton Reid keep O'Brien from the judgeship. Then when Reid has need of O'Brien he has a miraculous conversion in his thinking.Mazurki stands out in this film one of his best performances and he too needs O'Brien in the end. His best scene is with Wyatt when he tells her why he's just become O'Brien's factotum. In the supporting cast the unbilled Mary Alan Hokanson has one great scene with O'Brien as the widow of a man who was killed in a motor vehicle incident that O'Brien gets the driver off.By the way, the way O'Brien does it is one for the books.Criminal Lawyer, almost criminal not to watch it.

Pat O'Brien gives one of his greatest later day performances. While not quite past his prime, he's a bit paunchy, yet filled with passion, playing a defense attorney with quite a few tricks left up his sleeve. He's not above being a little crafty in getting his clients off, proving that key witness Charles Lane isn't as sound-sighted as he suggests. In fact, the moment you see Lane, remembering all those bespeckled characters he's played, you know he's an easy target. Then, in another case (where he's not the attorney of record, just an adviser), he uses a variety of different types to prove that anybody can be guilty of hitting a pedestrian, no matter drunk or sober. When a cute old lady lies injured on the ground, her eyes open with a twinkle, and there's a sly laugh from the writers to the audience.The major storyline shows his decline into a drunken depression when his sly ways prevent him from getting a judgeship he so desperately wants. When his right hand man (giant Mike Mazurki in his best performance) is accused of murdering one of O'Brien's rivals, he must pull himself together to defend him, even though the cards are stacked against him. Mazurki is almost wife-like to O'Brien, loyal to a fault, and at one point, even wearing a woman's kitchen apron while preparing for a dinner party. This gentle giant (the Brad Garrett of his day) is obviously not all there, yet his devotion to his employer is very touching.Future "Father Knows Best" wife Jane Wyatt (already a veteran movie star) is very good as his loyal secretary, with outstanding character performances by T.V. veteran Marvin Kaplan, Jerome Cowan and Douglas Fowley. This is a neat little "B" courtroom drama with a few film noir elements (included on a five film DVD of forgotten Columbia Film Noir) that is well written, very well acted, and filled with those little details that make this type of cinema great for a look back at what made the golden age so great and why not all the cinematic gems are those whose images are usually seen in Academy Award edits or AFI tributes to the various genres of the best years of cinema.

This Columbia 1951 programmer has no connection to the RKO film of 1937. But then again it does have a connection to the vast multitude of legal films that trot out the shady-but-ultimately-noble defense lawyer character. This time that character is played by Pat O'Brien. At least O'Brien modulates his performance, keeping away from his usual brassy, fast-talking, finger-jut-to-the-lapel style. In fact, he's rather subdued, chiefly because he goes on a binge-drinking tailspin every time he feels guilty about the consequences of his shady tactics. Oddly, nobody else amongst his staff seems to mind his shenanigans one bit, including Jane Wyatt's seemingly upright citizen character who is curiously written as unquestioning and ever-faithful. It's just a b-movie of modest ambitions, but there's little action, little humor, and little threat to the main characters. The worst thing O'Brien faces is a guilty conscience and the loss of a judgeship. The best thing in the movie is Mike Mazurki. Not that he was ever a great actor, but his usually small appearances as nothing more than a thuggish prop in so many films makes his work in this film notable. He actually gets to play a thinking, normal, even smiling, human being. Sure, he's playing an ex-wrestler bodyguard named Moose, but he also shows a caring side by keeping watch over O'Brien, and is even wearing an apron and cooking in one scene! I believe he also gets more lines to speak in this film than any other he ever appeared in. And there's also a small part of a witness played by the ubiquitous Charles Lane. Of Lane, there's probably no other more famous "face" in Hollywood who appeared in so many movies without being credited.