****SPOILERS**** Re-make of the 1935 gangster movie "Public Hero" this new and updated version has a 20 year old Donna Reed in her film debut as Terry O'Reilly-a fine Irish lass-who's brother Johnny "Dinkie" Black played by future song & dance man Dan Dailey had crashed out of prison. With a bullet in his chest and fellow convict Jeff Crane, Robert Sterling,the two head out to Chicago to lay low until the heat, law, cools off. Its then that we learn that convict Crane is really an undercover FBI Agent who got into prison and close to Dinkie so he can lead him to the notorious "River Gang" that he's the leader of. Hold out at a flophouse run by fellow but now released convict Moose Jones, Ernie Whitman, Dinkie makes more trouble for himself when in a spur of the moment he guns Moose down when he shows some interest in the $5,000.00 reward he can earn for himself in turning Dinkie in.
It's when Dinkie together with Crane get back to his home, a mansion with a Chinese butler, in Scottsford Wisconsin that Crane runs into Terry who at first he didn't know was Dinkie's kid sister, small world isn't it, and falls in love with her. With Dinkie on the mend due to him being treated by part time mob doctor and full time drunk Josiah Glass, Charles Winninger, he now plans to reunite with his gang and get back into business of payrolls robberies which the gang specializes in. That's unless Crane get the word out to his boss in the FBI Jim Duff, Donald Douglas, the gangs future plans and where their hideout is located!
Not all the believable in that Doc. Glass who's drunk every minute he's on the screen being able to preform a delicate and dangerous as well as successful, without anesthetic, operation on the near dead Dinkie and bring him back to health better then he ever was before he got shot. What also wasn't at all convincing is Terry who loved her gangster brother would fall and still be in love with Crane even after she find out that he's out to get Dinkie and put him behind bars or, in Dinkie knocking off Moose, even strapped into the state of Illinois electric chair!
***SPOILERS*** In the end it was Terry who lead the Feds, or FBI, straight to Dinkie by having him,in disguise, meet her at her job as as a cashier at the Place Ballroom to get some hard needed cash. With the place staked out by some 30 G-Men and Dinkie taking time to have a last dance with a hot looking blond, Vanda, Ann Borg that he met there it didn't take that long for the Boys in the FBI to get the drop on him.
***MAJOR SPOILER*** The ultra surgery Hollywood type ending spoiled the entire movie with Terry smooching with Crane after him breaking into her passenger train compartment just moments before she, outraged at him for setting up and having Dinkie gunned down, was going to have him thrown out of it!
It's when Dinkie together with Crane get back to his home, a mansion with a Chinese butler, in Scottsford Wisconsin that Crane runs into Terry who at first he didn't know was Dinkie's kid sister, small world isn't it, and falls in love with her. With Dinkie on the mend due to him being treated by part time mob doctor and full time drunk Josiah Glass, Charles Winninger, he now plans to reunite with his gang and get back into business of payrolls robberies which the gang specializes in. That's unless Crane get the word out to his boss in the FBI Jim Duff, Donald Douglas, the gangs future plans and where their hideout is located!
Not all the believable in that Doc. Glass who's drunk every minute he's on the screen being able to preform a delicate and dangerous as well as successful, without anesthetic, operation on the near dead Dinkie and bring him back to health better then he ever was before he got shot. What also wasn't at all convincing is Terry who loved her gangster brother would fall and still be in love with Crane even after she find out that he's out to get Dinkie and put him behind bars or, in Dinkie knocking off Moose, even strapped into the state of Illinois electric chair!
***SPOILERS*** In the end it was Terry who lead the Feds, or FBI, straight to Dinkie by having him,in disguise, meet her at her job as as a cashier at the Place Ballroom to get some hard needed cash. With the place staked out by some 30 G-Men and Dinkie taking time to have a last dance with a hot looking blond, Vanda, Ann Borg that he met there it didn't take that long for the Boys in the FBI to get the drop on him.
***MAJOR SPOILER*** The ultra surgery Hollywood type ending spoiled the entire movie with Terry smooching with Crane after him breaking into her passenger train compartment just moments before she, outraged at him for setting up and having Dinkie gunned down, was going to have him thrown out of it!