Law of the Wolf (1939)

Powerful

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

LAW OF THE WOLF is a fun prison break movie starring Rin Tin Tin Jr. as Rinty, the helpful German Shepherd who can be relied upon to assist our hero in his escape from the authorities and a vengeful killer. You see, Dennis Moore was wrongly accused of murder but has busted out of the joint to clear his name, and everyone's after him.This film is very fast paced and fits a lot of incident into the brief running time. It's an outdoors adventure packed with rescue attempts, fight scenes, and incident. The film's B-movie atmosphere means it will win no awards for quality but as a straight melodrama it works nicely, and the dog is of course a delightful star.

Starting off at the state penitentiary, this first looks like a low budget crime drama. It is, at first, until you end up in the wilds with Dennis Moore and Luana Anders back for another round of doggie love with the irrepressible Rin Tin Tin Jr. He's out to aide an escaped convict who is trying to prove himself innocent of his brother's murder and find the real killer who, along with the law, is on his trail. The film creaks along but is aided by some great action, highlighted by the rescue of a little boy sailing down the river by himself on a canoe. Between baby rescuing and murderer capturing, this lovable dog has no time to be just another ordinary dog. If all films on public domain all come from the same print, then this film is in serious trouble. I've seen various prints of public domain films from various labels that are virtually the same. This one had huge amounts of noise interference that I did not notice on other public domain Rin Tin Tin films. It stops about half way through the film, making it somewhat difficult to get into the story. Hiwever, with patience and fortitude, you can manage it thanks to the touching elements of the drama.

While mostly fast-paced and watchable, "Law of the Wolf" (also called "Law of the Wild") is too far-fetched and melodramatic to be taken very seriously. The plot does work fairly well as light entertainment, despite a complete lack of believability.When Carl Pearson (Dennis Moore) is unjustly convicted of killing his brother, he breaks out of prison with the help of another convict to try to clear his name and also to recover some valuable airplane plans that his brother left behind. He is pursued both by the police and by the real killer, while his fellow escapee tries to turn the situation to his own advantage. Quite a bit happens from there, most of it dependent on coincidence, on weird decisions by the characters, and on improbable events. Whenever these cannot take care of everything, Rin Tin Tin Jr. is on hand to fix things up with his amazing insight into human intentions.It moves fast enough to keep your attention most of the time, but it is all too far-fetched to be anything more than very light entertainment.