ridiculous rating

Better Late Then Never

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

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

Loan Shark finds George Raft an ex-con come to live with his sister Helen Westcott after his release. Their neighbor and secretary to the owner of the factory where Westcott's husband is employed, Dorothy Hart puts in a good word for Raft for a job.Owner Charles Meredith has a special job in mind for Raft, investigating and finding out who's behind a group of loan sharks who have been putting many of his employees in their debt. Raft doesn't want this kind of work, but changes his mind when his brother-in-law Bill Phipps is killed.But unfortunately this involves Raft going undercover and working for the gang until he can find out who the real boss is. He makes a lot of enemies, including Westcott and Hart until the job is done.The film was done for B picture studio Lippert films and possibly at a major studio it would have had a lot of the plot holes filled. The writing could have used some improvement, but action goes along at a nice pace and Raft is perfectly cast in the hero part. During this time Raft was doing most of his work in B films and some of them are not bad at all. Loan Shark is one of them.

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.

It's marvelous what skillful photography and a good tailor can do. Here's George Raft, just a year away from his tired, weary, sagging, crumpled pseudo-hero of Man from Cairo, looking as neat and natty and almost as vigorous as his just-stepped-out-of-a-bandbox tough-guy of the 1940s. George not only looks like a star, he's in fiery action and smart-talking fettle. And he has a wonderful support cast here too, led by superbly costumed Dorothy Hart. Margia Dean in a small role as a café waitress is also up front in the looks department as is gorgeous TV cheer-leader, Spring Mitchell, in her only movie appearance. The villains are top too, with Paul Stewart in fine form as a suspicious blood-sucker. The plot, stolen from Richard L. Breen and Warren Duff's Appointment with Danger (1951) – and used again by Lippert in Portland Expose (1957) – generates plenty of excitement, thanks to the pacey, always-on-the-mettle direction of Seymour Friedman, one of the more inventive and astute of "B" men. Of course with this movie, he did enjoy four big advantages in the solid cast line-up; the ability to use atmospheric natural locations such as the Goodyear Tire Factory; and the inventively noirish cinematography contributed by Joseph Biroc, a master of the art of black-and-white suspensers such as Johnny Allegro, Cry Danger, Glass Wall and World for Ransom; and last but not least, a $250,000 budget!

It sure was odd seeing a 57 year-old George Raft playing essentially the same role he'd been playing almost twenty years earlier--especially since the stuntman they used for him looked much younger and a lot more fit! Also, having a 27 year age difference between him and his girlfriend also strained the limits of credibility. However, if you can ignore the oddness of the casting, then it's a very good example of Film Noir that is sure to please lovers of this genre.Raft plays a man who has just gotten out of prison for assault. He genuinely wants to go straight, but unfortunately the job prospect he has wants him to do some undercover work to determine who's in charge of a local loan shark business. He turns the job down, but when his brother-in-law is soon killed by these thugs, he changes his mind and works his way up through the racket to find "Mr. Big".An exciting script, very good acting and pacing make this a fine fine example of Film Noir. If you liked this film, try to see Alan Ladd in APPOINTMENT WITH DANGER. The plot is very similar, though the Ladd film is a good bit grittier and tougher.By the way, although this is a good film, Raft's prospects in Hollywood were pretty bleak at this point in his career. Raft made a habit of turning down amazing roles and by the 1950s he was starring in mostly B-pictures. According to IMDb, he'd "turned down High Sierra (1941), The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1942) and Double Indemnity (1944)"--yikes!