Johnny Apollo

Robert Cain, Jr. (Tyrone Power) has a falling out with his father (Edward Arnold) when the old man gets sent up for embezzlement.  But he soon has a change of heart and tries get his pop an early parole.  In the process, he’ll become “Johnny Apollo” and fall in with a rough gangster (Lloyd Nolan), a shady but kind Shakespeare-quoting attorney (Charley Grapewin) and a sweet gal (Dorothy Lamour).  As his criminal exploits and associations get publicized, the rift between him and his father grows once again.

This is a pretty snoozy noir.  Most of the sizzle is saved for the jailbreak climax, and even that is a relatively lackluster affair.  There’s a few good lines of dialogue and a couple of nice shots, and Nolan is a cold-hearted little bastard (as good as a baddie as he is playing a cop).  But there’s just not that much to hold your interest.  Power, who stars in one of my favorites, Nightmare Alley, is mostly a dud here, with a character that lacks any strong personality trait.  Lamour is okay — and gets most of the best lines — but she’s got a couple of uninspired songs that she doesn’t perform that well.  It’s never clear exactly what, if anything, “Johnny Apollo” is doing that’s so notorious.  And it’s a bit disconcerting that the film implies white-collar criminals are really just amazingly swell guys who made a few little mistakes.

Henry Hathaway has a generally good track record with noir, but this is one of his misses.  Rating: Poor (53)

IMDb