Loan Shark 1952 DvdRip Mp4 Lee1001

Loan Shark 1952 DvdRip Mp4 Lee1001



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044847/

http://www.movieweb.com/movie/loan-shark

OldAle1 from United States 25 July 2009

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Rather better than "Arson Inc" with which it's pared on a VCI DVD is "Loan Shark" which benefits from an obviously larger budget and something of a name cast, though it's still clearly a b-picture at heart. George Raft, rather old and perhaps a bit miscast at 57 and stiff and humorless is Joe Gargan, out of prison after a few years for assault and battery, trying to make a new life by getting a straight job at the tire factor his brother-in-law works for. But we know right away it ain't gonna be easy as the film opens with one of the most awesome quick, violent scenes in noir as an unknown man leaves his apartment and is quickly followed to an alley and brutally beaten within an inch of his life.



The beatings it turns out come courtesy of a loan shark ring that has much of the plant, and much of the unnamed city in thrall. The young workers get in debt, wanting to buy their wives nice things or betting on the horses, and they're led to the ring by an unknown stooge. Gargan comes to just get a simple job, but is recruited instead by the tire company president to investigate the goings-on and find out who is the stooge, and as much as he can about the operation.



At first Gargan resists the notion, wanting nothing to do with this, but after his brother-in-law is killed he goes all in, even going so far as to infiltrate the loan shark operation by becoming the protégé of the group's leader at the tire factory, Donelli (the always wonderfully slimy Paul Stewart) and eventually working his way into starting a new operation with a dummy laundry service. By this point he's on the same page as Donelli, with only the big boss Phillips (John Hoyt, enormously charming and catlike dangerous) above him. Or is there someone else...we and he don't get to find that out until the nicely staged finale which culminates in a shootout in a theater.



Along the way Gargan starts a romance with a young lady who lives on the same floor as his sister, but loses her when he goes deeply into the mobsters' racket, even going so far as to beat up her brother for non-payment of loans. The romantic scenes are obvious reminders of one of the few problems this tough and exciting little picture has - Raft, who is definitely old enough to make his job prospects at the plant rather unbelievable and his romance with Ann (Dorothy Hart, about half his age) a little creepy. But beyond that, he's wooden and monotonal in a way that reminded me more of Charles Bronson 30 years later than Raft's own much better work 20 years earlier. Oh well, he does get the job done and he's still tough and mean-looking enough that he doesn't really detract from a nice little slightly off-the-beaten track entry in the cycle. A noir set in a tire factory? Who'da thought.



VIDEO

Size.... 427mb

Duration.... 01:19:41

Codec.... avc1

Frame Width..... 576

Frame Height.... 416

Data Rate.... 626kbps

Frame Rate.... 23F/S

AUDIO

Bit Rate.... 118kbps

2 Channel Stereo

Audio Sample Rate.... 48KHz

Bits Per Sample 16 Bit/Sample