Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Johnny Allegro has George Raft in the title role as an ex-con trying to go straight. Under an alias he's living life as a hotel florist, but manages to get himself involved with the beautiful Nina Foch and get himself framed for a cop killing. Foch is slightly married to the epicene George MacReady whom the Feds want to nab real bad. It's not just his elaborate counterfeiting operation that they want to shut down. MacReady is being financed by the Soviet Union and he's got quite a setup in distributing counterfeit and raking off a big bundle from his Soviet handler Ivan Triesault. MacReady and Foch live in fine style on an unknown Caribbean island that the Feds would like to know the location of to bust MacReady and his operation. In the end MacReady proves too much for his Soviet bosses.Not so with Raft and his contact Will Geer who plays a Treasury agent. Geer in many spots steals the film from the leads with a nice laconic performance, not unlike his Wyatt Earp in Winchester 73.Johnny Allegro is typical of the action/noir type films that Raft was doing at this point in his career. Soon he'd be working for Poverty Row Lippert films and Johnny Allegro from Columbia's B picture unit looked like Citizen Kane next to their stuff.Fans of George Raft will be pleased. Especially with that ending borrowed from The Most Dangerous Game.

**SPOILERS** Tough guy George Raft is fugitive from the law Johnny Rock who's now on the lamb as the genteel and soft spoken hotel florist Johnny Allgero trying to live his life on the straight and narrow. That's until Johnny runs into, while delivering flowers, mystery woman Glenda Chapman, Nina Foch, who's being tracked down by the US Treasury Department. Not at first knowing what he's getting himself into, in his involvement with Glenda, Johnny is soon contacted by US Treasury Agent Schulty, Will Green, who fills him in on all the details.It seems that Glenda's husband Morgan Vallin, George MacReady, together with his Commie secret agents is in the process of destroying the US economy by passing off as much as a half billion dollars in counterfeit money while playing the horses at the local, Hialeah & Gulfstream, Florida racetracks. This gets real serious, which is why the US Government is now taking a keen interest in it, in that Vallin is in fact, even though it's not mentioned in the movie, a paid Soviet Agent himself who's working for the NKVD to undermine with his two Soviet controllers Vetch & Gote, Ivan Triesdault & Walter Rode, the US currency exchange by devaluation the US Dollar in flooding the country, as well as the world, with fake US currency! It's now Johnny's job, like it or not, to stop Vallin and his Commie friends from passing hundreds of millions of fake US dollars through racetracks and casinos by getting in good with him and finding out where he has the phony money stashed! If Johnny succeeds he's get a pardon from the President that will have his sentence of ten years behind bars, at Sing Sing Prison, reduced to time served!Johnny using his wit charm as well as tough guy good looks soon get's Glenda to see things his way in going against her scare-faced husband Vallin and his gang who was keeping her in the dark about what his sinister motives are. Glenda thought that he was just a run of the mill Hollywood type gangster not a Communist Agent planing to destroy her, as well as 150 million other Americans, way of life!Even though George Raft was in his mid fifties at the time he did look and act convincingly, as Johnny Allegro, as the no BS sh*t-kicking though guy that we all got to know and love in his younger days in the many previous gangster films he stared in. We learned earlier in the movie that Johnny while on the lamb from the law did his patriotic duty by joining the O.S.S, predecessor to the C.I.A, and US paratroopers, while in his late 40's, to fight the Japs in the Pacifc! That despite the fact that Johnny was a fugitive from the law at the time that he did it!

I know the '49 film "Johnny Allegro" was late in George Raft's career and he was at or near age 54 when he did this picture in Los Angeles, but since the film is in black and white it also hides a lot of aged looks on an actor's face, etc..... However, "Johnny Allegro" is still one of his better starring efforts.....Odd as it seems, George Raft is one of my top classic gangster figures from the golden age of Hollywood. However, I must admit, George Raft was usually better when he was the supporting actor and not so much as the lead.. I guess the reason is, as a supporter in a film, George Raft had the opportunity of working with guys like James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Paul Muni and Humphrey Bogart... Even if the script was below par, with the aide of an all-star cast it often can lift a poor film up a bit because of the cast of actors appearing in the scenes together.... I noticed that when George Raft was the lead actor, he often was forced to carry the film alone and was working with good but "Lesser" actors who weren't as popular with film viewer's.... Thus, those type of films get reduced to "B" quality.....I guess that George Raft's peak years in Hollywood was more than likely between 1938 to 1945...... By '45 George Raft was age 50 and fully wearing some upper hair-piece to cover the horse shoe.... Cheers to George Raft....MR.BILL Raleigh

While Raft never does any role is any way but very straight forward, the image of the hero is just too starched. Raft ends up on a tropical island without a change of clothes yet in the succeeding days he always appears in the same suit and tie, often with a hat, always perfect. He runs through the steaming jungle and never appears sweaty - what a hero! It is these kinds of conceits that seemed so cool now make these B thrillers just silly. The mastermind, George MacCready, with his smooth evil voice was the real star; the unlikely use of a bow and arrow as his offensive weapon of choice, along with the ease with which this slightly built man drew back the nominally 70 lb bow, made everything fun. No this things don't have to make sense, but they were enjoyable and exciting when the world was simpler and young.