Best movie of this year hands down!

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Having never seen this before I recorded it off TCM more out of curiosity than expectation. Boy, was I wrong! This one really is a gem.The hugely talented Mitchell and Qualen dominate - as has already been noted by previous reviewers. Garfield is suitably nasty, but not too nasty. Lupino is believably hormonally confused between her "steady Eddie" boyfriend George (appropriately played by Eddie "Green Acres" Albert) and Garfield's devil-may-care petty gangster.Overall, it's a fairly slight story, but extremely well directed, staged and photographed. The satisfying ending merely adds the finishing touch. Terrific atmosphere somewhere between "To Have and Have Not" and some darker Capra moments, terrific acting and a great way to spend 80 minutes or so.Had this starred Bogart or Edward G Robinson, it would have been more widely recognised today for the minor classic that it undoubtedly is.

Always liked John Garfield films and his style of acting, in this film John plays the role as Harold Goff who is a racketeer who lives around the water front and burns people's boats who do not pay for his protection money. Jonah Goodwin, (Thomas Mitchell) is an elderly man who owns a business and loves to fish along with his friend, Olaf Johnson, (John Qualen) who is a chef in a local store. These two men are confronted by Harold Goff who demands five dollars a week protection money for their boat, they eventually give in and start paying him. However, Harold starts dating Jonah Goodwin's daughter, Stella Goodwin and she starts falling in love with him. Harold finds out that Jonah has saved one-hundred and ninety dollars and so he decides to grab that money from him and that is when the trouble starts to happen. This is a great picture and one you will not want to miss. Enjoy.

I found this movie painful to watch. Jack Warner should have been ashamed to release it quite frankly. I love John Garfield, Ida Lupino and the others as actors but Anatole Litvak, the director, went seriously off the rails with this one. He really should have reigned in John Garfield a little.Indeed, John Garfield's character of Goff is so one-dimensionally nasty that you can't but cheer when he gets his come-uppance (as the movie code would have demanded). Ida Lupino was so stupidly infatuated with him, even knowing the racketeer was harassing her father, that one can only hold her in contempt. Qualen is so spineless and MacMahon is so loud and off-putting (her character yes, but over the top!) that I could barely stand it. And the cops and judge...no wonder people make jokes about them! The only lights I could find in this movie were Thomas Mitchell's character of Jonah and to a lesser extent Eddie Albert's character of George. They save the movie from total disaster.I wanted to love this movie because I love the actors. Sadly, I can only say I got through it.

(Some Spoilers) Petty shake-down artist Howard Goff, John Garfield, has everyone on the Sheepshead Bay docks terrorized in paying him protection money to keep their boats from having an unfortunate accident, like Goff setting them on fire. Getting old man Johnah Goodwin, Thomas Mitchell, and his partner Olaf Johnson, John Qualen, to pay him a $5.00 in weekly protection fee wasn't enough for the arrogant and greedy Goff. He also wanted Jonah's pretty daughter Stella, Ida Lupino, as well to be his woman and that got under the skin of Stella's long time boyfriend George, Eddie Albert, who's been waiting for years, until he saved up enough money as a fish auctioneer,to marry her.Stella for her part kind of liked the "I take whatever I want" attitude of Goff as well as his taking her out to fancy night-clubs to dance and dink the night away with him. She completely overlooked that he was shaking down her father and even worked him over with a rubber hose when he dared to go to the police for help. Goff has both Jonah and his wimpy friend and partner Olaf over a barrel in having them sign a $1,000 loan, that Goff never loaned them, to cover his weekly shakedowns of them them. The two come to the one and only conclusion that they could come up with in getting Goff out of their lives. That's to do to him what he's always threatening to do to them. Rub out the thieving good for nothing swine and do it in a way that it looks accidental!Based on the Irwin Shaw play "The Gentle People" the movie shows what was meant by the biblical saying that "The meek shall inherit the earth". Where in this case it's their fishing boats on the Sheepshead Bay docks. Goff a one man protection racket took what he wanted and feared no one not even the cops. Who in the movie was a 63 year-old arthritic looking officer Magruder, Robert Homans. Magruder in the movie is seen having trouble running, as well as walking, and was in danger of slipping on the already slippery docks.It's when both Jonah and Olaf went to the police for help and all they got for it was laughs from the judge Jonah & Olaf came to the bitter conclusion that they'll have to take the law into heir own hands to put an end to Goff's reign of terror against them and their fellow fishermen. Fortunately for them it was fate that intervened in their favor and took care of Goff, in a very unusual way, that kept Jonah & Olaf lifelong law abiding citizens from breaking the law to do it.Stella who was playing her deeply in love with her and not that bright boyfriend George for a sucker didn't at all come out smelling like a rose, or violet, in the movie. Even though George always forgave her every time that she screwed, figuratively not literally, him in two-timing George for Goff. The ending got me a little wheezy in George taking Stella back and at the same time George being such a jerk that he as much didn't feel that he was at all betrayed. In that Stella who already screwed him once would screw him a second or third or forth time as well!