Really Surprised!

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

My summary is NOT meant to offend...believe me. But this is the attitude that is pervasive in "The Law in Her Hands". When the film begins, a thug slaps around a restaurant owner and tries to sell him protection. Two women witness this and are not dissuaded by threats from the gangsters to not show up for court after their friend and fellow thug is captured. However, the gang doesn't realize that these are two extra-ordinary women. Wentworth & Davis (Margaret Lindsey and Glenda Farrell) are lawyers and they do more than just testify...they help the DA convict the guy!As for these lady lawyers, they are recent law school graduates and are about to open up their own practice. However, they cannot find any clients...possibly because it's a sexist world back in the 1930s. In fact, the DA is SUPER-sexist as he wants Wentworth to simply close her practice and make babies....even though she worked long and hard to finish law school. In disgust, Wentworth begins working for Legs Gordon (Lyle Talbot)...a crook who offered her work when no one else would. It turns out that the lawyers are great at their work...and get acquittal after acquittal because of their underhanded tactics. In other words, you appreciate that the women want to be self-sufficient and successful...though they do it in a very sleazy manner. Because of this, the message about equality and women's rights is very muddled...which is a shame. And, the message by the end of the film seems to be that a woman's place IS in the home!! It's a shame...the acting is nice and the film could have worked...but didn't due to the times in which it was made and indifferent writing.

And when I say outdated, I don't mean by today's standards - I mean by mid-1940s standards; when the WWII circumstances forced more women than ever before into positions of power and responsibility, the "women are meant to sit at home" theories became largely obsolete. Made a few years earlier, "The Law In Her Hands" suggests that women's meddling in "men's business" is mere foolishness! The heroine's boyfriend, and also district attorney, is such an utter, utter jerk that I was almost rooting for the gangster - at least he had an appreciation for a woman's brain! The teaming of Margaret Lindsay (here younger than I'm used to seeing her but just as beautiful) and Glenda Farrell (who is rather wasted in a clearly secondary role) is promising on paper, but this film seems more concerned with delivering its reactionary message. ** out of 4.

A talented set of actors, including Glenda Farrell in her hard-boiled, tough-talking mode, work hard in this Warner's B about a pair of young woman lawyers starting out, fighting for work and -- in Margaret Lindsay's case -- the amatory advances of Warren Hull. It comes off as pretty much of a programmer. Sidney Hickox' camera work is up to Warner Brothers fast-moving, underlit standard, but none of the actors, with the exception of the always engaging Miss Farrell, and Al Shean in a small role at the beginning of the movie as a restaurateur resisting some mobsters in the protection racket, manage any real oomph in their roles -- even Linsday and Talbot seem a bit stagy. Debit perennial B director Clemens for the failure.THE LAW IN HER HANDS has the makings of a decent Warners B. The courtroom vignettes are amusing, but it's been done too many times and by people more interested in the work.

I had a hard time accepting the wise-cracking Glenda Farrell as a lawyer, and I suppose the writers did too. She's Margaret Lindsay's partner but never does any lawyering, and is there mostly for comedy. So is Eddie Acuff, their process server who is always bandaged after being beaten by the party he served, in a running gag. Perhaps I am a bit naive, but I was put off by the tricks the lawyers pulled to win their cases. We see Robert Emmett Keane plant a pint of whiskey in a coat pocket to cause Lindsay to lose a case, which teaches her to play a few tricks herself. She gets a phony mother to sit by a gangster client and plays on the sympathy of one juror, who causes a hung jury. Worse, while Farrell distracts the turnkey, she creates a phony photograph, in the prison cell no less, using lipstick on a client to simulated blood, in order to invalidate his confession. These acts are not only unethical, but also illegal. Of course, at the time she was working for racketeer Lyle Talbot, and she does try to quit when he faces charges of poisoning seven children by accident. All Talbot was trying to do was scare the milk producers into joining his "protective association." After Talbot murders a witness and wounds Assistant District Attorney Warren Hull, who saw him do it, he forces Lindsay to defend him by threatening her and Hull, whom she loves. But Lindsay still has a bag of tricks to use in his trial.The performances are average, with no one actor particularly standing out. The 1930's male mentality about marriage is also present: Hull wants to marry Lindsay only if she quits being a lawyer and settles down to run his household.