I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Some picture pre-war and after-war in Hollywood have this problem the Ultra-nationalism and damage the movie,here have Humphrey Bogart before became a star in a role of an American who loose your job's position for a stranger...so he joint a kind of gang called black legion taking he to help to pressing people and even committing murder to clean up the way for native American workers..l don't know if it was happened or it was one more a political movie propaganda from the 30'

Assuming you are a Bogart fan you will enjoy this unexpected glimpse into his character's deep past. Toothy and gushing, not far from the Bowery Boys (they wear jagged beanies like Jughead), yet he is already a successful family man with the astounding O'Brien-Moore.It is a worker's paradise, yet he gets sucked in to a violent secret society designed to further the good of WASPS like himself. So now at last you see Bogart playing the Fascist! Or the film's interpretation of what Fascism really is. Of course it is not altogether ridiculous but it is really no more than a Boston Blackie action film, typical of the time.It is good though, very entertaining film. You will see images of Bogart which are entirely uncharacteristic.

Particularly considering the year -- 1937 -- this is a remarkably powerful film. Powerful enough that the original story received an Academy Award nomination, and Humphrey Bogart was named best actor by the National Board Of Review. And although this is a year after "The Petrified Forest", I have to rate this film and Bogart's performance here as far superior.Humphrey Bogart's acting as a simple factory worker who gets wrapped up in the Black Legion (a sort of KKK organization) is remarkable. First, the common man with a nice wife and wonderful kid. Then he loses out on a promotion to a "foreigner", and he becomes a bitter man. Then he joins the Black Legion and becomes a cruel thug. And then, when he murders his own friend (Dick Foran) he becomes a humbled and scared man who -- in the end -- stands up in court and names names, exposing the secret society, but also results in putting himself in prison for life.Dick Foran is good here, as in Bogart's wife Erin O'Brien-Moore. You almost won't recognize Ann Sheridan as the neighbor, but you will recognize many of the character actors in this film...although you probably won't know their names.This film is based on a real-life story that occurred in 1935. The Ku Klux Klan actually sued Warner Brothers for patent infringement for the film's use of a patented Klan insignia, but a judge threw out the case. Interestingly, first choice for the lead character was Edward G. Robinson -- a much bigger star at the time. Fortunately, he was too busy, because as an ethic looking actor, he would have been badly miscast in a story about resentment about foreigners! An "8"!

1937's "Black Legion" tells a story of a man's involvement with what amounts to the Klan without coming out and calling it that. Humphrey Bogart stars as Frank Taylor, a working man who loses a bid to become foreman when a foreign-born man gets the job instead. The Legion is right up Taylor's alley, reinforcing his belief that his woes are all the fault of the foreign-born. He gradually gets more immune to the violence as he gets in deeper and deeper with the Black Legion. It really is a very good vehicle for Bogart's acting talent as his morality gradually unwinds. The sermon at the end seems a little tacked on, much like a similar scene in 1933's "Wild Boys of the Road", but it doesn't detract too much from the overall film.