The Enforcer (1951)

Today’s review is the 1951 Humphrey Bogart movie “The Enforcer” also know as “Murder Inc.” in the UK and based off the real life Murder Inc that committed around 400 murders between 1929 and 1940. A Bogart movie I haven’t seen before is a rarity in itself, but a Film Noir with Bogart in I haven’t seen is pretty much unheard of. Yet here we are. So let’s dig in!

The movie was directed by Bretaigne Windust and Raoul Walsh, not as one unit though, the movie was Windust’s but after he fell ill Walsh was brought in to finish the movie. Walsh refused to take credit, but still a good portion of the film was his work. It was written by Martin Rackin. The supporting cast includes Ted de Corsia and Everett Sloane (Both appeared in “Lady From Shanghai”) and Noir regular Roy Roberts (“He Walked By Night”, “Force of Evil”). It was Bogarts last movie for Warner.

Death of a Witness.

The story begins with a close escort and guard of Joseph Rico (de Corsia) a star witness on a trial that is due to start the following morning. The witness is scared though and after an assassination attempt, tries to escape from the precinct only to fall to his death. As the only witness to the case, District Attorney Martin Ferguson (Bogart) is left with no choice but to spend the night going over all the case notes to try and see if he can find something he has missed that may lead to a second witness or some other piece of evidence.

What follows is a series of flashbacks following the police investigation and the story of the gangsters as they come into contact with the police and Ferguson. It follows them unravelling an organisation created to sell murder, taking out “Contracts” on “Hits”. Eventually leading them to the ringlead Albert Mendoza (Sloane) and the original assassination, the only he carried out himself. There was something they missed though, something that can change the entire case when they figure it out, if they figure it out before the villains….

Cops and Killers.

This is very much a film whose strength is in the plot and not characters. While Bogart’s performance is top notch I’d be hard pressed to tell you much about his characters personality outside of “determined to get his man”. While he is the lead, he actually has very little screen time since the majority of the story is told via flashbacks where his character is not present. As a result it’s sort of a selection of short stories where a selection of criminals basically get centre stage.

Fortunately they aren’t just two dimensional hoods, but none of them especially stands out. The best of the bunch is Ted de Corsia’s “Rico”, who due to the way much of the narrative works in reverse chronological order, goes from terrified coward, to cold blooded mob boss and then street level thug. The films real antagonist though, Sloane’s “Mendoza” is unseen for the vast majority of the movie.

Right From That First Crazy Day

The plot though is interesting and unique in how it unravels the mystery. The majority of the story is told in flashbacks, bookended by fairly action heavy sequences involving the two key witnesses. We start out at one point in time, near the end of the story, but after they lose their witness and start going through the police files we see a police investigation from the start through to the current time. However, that investigation unravels the story of criminal events (Though witness statements) from the end, back towards the start. The final reveal being how the whole thing started off and what ultimately the investigation is all about. Effectively there are two timelines, the police and the criminals, one going forwards and the other going back.

Of course flashbacks are heavily utilised in the Film Nori genre with many of the most famous Film Noir’s being almost entirely flashbacks (Occasionally narrated by a dead guy), so it’s not unusual, but effectively having flashbacks within flashbacks is a little different. One of the nice touches is because they go out of their way to not show you Mendoza during the opening, so between that and the slow unravelling the audience is very much in the same position as the cops and the clue to bringing down Mendoza is there for all to see but small enough that most won’t. It’s well played out.

Everything But Himself.

Visually the film has it’s moments, such as Rico’s foolish attempt to climb a ledge of a building. But mostly the high pace and relatively short length of the movie gives little time to really indulge in that aspect of noir. Really it’s not surprising some critics don’t even consider this movie a Noir, but I would argue that as the film is built largely around flashbacks of people revealing the story of their own undoing it is very much a noir, even with the police framework. The police, even Bogart’s D.A. Ferguson are barely characters in this, they are just a narrative device to tell the story of the criminals self destruction. So it works for me.

Conclusion

Overall the film is solid and has a great plot, but lacks interesting characters and provides little in the audio/visual department that I found memorable. Bogart does a good job but has nothing to work with, making this one of his least interesting performances and not quite enough to raise the movie to the upper tier of Noir. I do like that plot though, it’s interesting both narratively and for the subject matter (Loosely based on the real life Murder Inc.). So with that in mind I’m giving this a narrow 6.5/10.