Crappy film

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The Miami Story is a fast moving no frills noir story about organized crime in Miami and Dade County. The supposition is that the explosive post World War II growth of the area led to a rise in organized crime and the police force did not grow with the population as well.Which calls for some drastic measures and a citizen's committee similar to the one that aided in the takedown of Al Capone in Chicago is formed here. Their reluctant operator is former gangster Barry Sullivan who says he's fronting for a Cuban syndicate. It's all one giant con game on the local Miami kingpin Luther Adler. Adler plays and plays well a lot of criminal types on the screen. He's a smart operator and won't be easy to fool. He also has as his number one trigger man John Baer who really loves his work.Beverly Garland and Adele Jergens play a pair of sisters, Garland is an entertainer and falls for Sullivan. Jergens is part of Adler's team and I think this might have been her career role. She's a tough cookie in charge of the vice and prostitution part of Adler's criminal empire. I think she was the best in the film.US Senator George Smathers introduced the film. I suspect that Smathers was looking for a little of Kefauver type publicity to attach itself to him. He was half way through his first term in the Senate and there was sure no downside to him being part of the promotion of The Miami Story.Smathers is long gone but the film holds up well for today's audience.

***SPOILERS*** Your usual 1950's crime movie-With a city in its title- that has ex-con Mick Flagg, Barry Sullivan, recruited by the Miami Police Department and citizens group to go undercover as a mobster in order to get the goods on mob boss Tony Brill, Luther Adler, who's in charge of the entire Miami & South Florida crime syndicate. It's Flagg who was framed on a murder charge, that he was found innocent of, by Brill 12 years ago that more then motivated him to do it. Flagg got help for one of Brill's bar girls, who hated his guts, Holly Abbott played by Beverly Garland who ended up being busted up and bed ridden-with a cracked skull-by one of Brill's men Ted Delacorte, John Baer, for her efforts.Working together with the Miami and Cuban police Flagg has Brill's casino bugged with the latest state of the art video and T.V equipment to get the goods on him in how he's cheating his paying customers on the crap card and roulette tables as well as laundering money for the mob. There's a falling out between Brill and his top henchman Delacrote who feels that their being set up by each other only to find out that it was Flagg that was doing the setting up.***SPOILERS****Sneaking on Brill's yacht Flagg's disarms and dumps Delacorte into Miami Bay and rescued his 10 year old son Gil,David Kasday,who was kidnapped by Brill's goon from a Northern Flordia orange grove with a wetting in his pants, in him knowing that the gig is up ,Brill meekly surrenders to the police with out a shot. That after him boasting like the late John Dillinger that he'll never be taken alive!P.S The movie "Miami Story" reunited both Luther Adler and Beverly Garland in the first film that they were in since the 1950 film noir classic "D.O.A".

Luther Adler heads a crime syndicate that's running Miami, with a fancy lawyer making sure he's untouchable, and a coldblooded John Baer to do his dirty jobs for him. The latest one is the assassination of 2 Cubans as they exit an airplane, in front of a crowd. Frustrated and fearing things will go from bad to worse now, local businessmen hire an ex-gangster from Chicago, Barry Sullivan, to try and get enough on Adler to get him in front of a grand jury. Adler framed Sullivan years before, so Sullivan accepts, and enlists the help of Cuban cops to pretend he's part of a Cuban crime ring moving in on Adler's turf. He also meets a woman who flew to Miami with the 2 deceased Cubans, Bevery Garland, who has an unsuspected connection to Adler's squeeze, Adele Jergens.One of countless docu-noirs exposing every sort of crime ring in every major US city, this one even has a Florida senator chime in at the start, as well as the mandatory authoritative narration. Made on a low budget, it's pretty standard fare, but still manages to entertain. Sullivan ('The Gangster') is great as the former gangster who's still cold and callous when necessary, and Adler ('D.O.A.') played villains for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Jergens ('Armored Car Robbery') and Garland ('New Orleans Uncensored') play opposite roles, and esp Jergens is great as a bitter femme fatale just past her prime.The directing by Fred F. Sears and cinematography by Harry Freulich is competent and occasionally inspired (there's a great shot of Garland when Sullivan first meets her inside his hotel room). They worked together on a number of movies, including other city/crime exposés like'Chicago Syndicate' and 'Inside Detroit'. Sears would even return to Miami a few years later for 'Miami Exposé'. All in all, while there's nothing under the sun here, and there are no real surprises (maybe that it's slightly more graphic than usual), it's a fast-paced and enjoyable movie if yer into this subgenre/corner of film noir.

"The Miami Story" (1954) was one of a whole wave of crime thrillers inspired by the Kefauver Senate hearings on organized crime that focused on individual cities and purported to tell the "story" of the crime wave that overwhelmed the city in question and how it was broken. They usually had some elected official come out on camera at the film's beginning to give the stamp of legitimacy and tell us something about "the story you're about to see" that has absolutely nothing to do with the story we're about to see. In the case of "The Miami Story," that official is Senator George Smathers of Florida, who assures us with a straight face that crime has been virtually wiped out in Miami. Right. (Did anyone inform Santos Trafficante?) Like all the other films in this cycle, "The Miami Story" takes a stock gangster plot that had been beaten to death in the 1930s and updates it to contemporary Florida. A committee of five Miami civic leaders seeks a way to bring down crime boss Tony Brill and his R&L Industries, the front for gambling and all sorts of vice rackets in Miami, so they call in ex-gangster Mick Flagg, who'd once been framed for murder by Brill and now lives incognito on an Indiana farm. Flagg is given a free hand and in no time at all is going through the motions of setting up a rival operation with Cuban backing, all to intimidate Brill, and ordering the police chief around as if he were Eliot Ness: "Give me some Cubans!" "I want the Biscayne Club closed town tonight!" The police in this film do all kinds of things on Flagg's orders that they could easily have done on their own. At one point, Flagg has the cops install a TV camera in Brill's office at the Biscayne Club, all to capture private, incriminating conversations. However, TV cameras back then were huge bulky affairs so they can only stick one in an air conditioning shaft with a grill in front of it. As if the gangsters won't bother to investigate why no cool air will be forthcoming that night in the Miami heat. And when the cops watch the proceedings on little TV monitors outside the club, we see Brill and his men on the tiny screens exactly as they're shot in the film, in medium shots complete with pans and zooms. No high angle, no wide angle, nothing blurry, and no AC grill blocking the view! And they hear everything clearly even though no mike was seen installed.Yes, the film is pretty far-fetched on all counts, never mind that they never even mention the mafia. Fortunately, the film is short (75 min.) and fast-paced and the cast is topped with four actors who really know how to sell this stuff. Tall, rugged western star Barry Sullivan plays Flagg and he's quite forceful and convincing, never one to hold back when a punch or a pistol-whipping are called for. Luther Adler, an old hand at film noir bad guys ("D.O.A.," "Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye"), plays Brill with old school charm and an indeterminate, vaguely Eastern European accent. Beverly Garland, also a veteran of "D.O.A." and later to shine in late '50s monster romps like "It Conquered the World" and "Curucu, Beast of the Amazon," plays Holly, an innocent girl caught up in the intrigue who takes sides with Flagg. Brassy blonde Adele Jergens, an underrated '50s B-movie queen, plays Gwen, Brill's all-knowing girlfriend and a cool customer in her own right.The director is Fred F. Sears, who knew how to craft these things so that they never slowed long enough to give an audience a chance to question it. He and this film's producer, Sam Katzman, and writer, Robert E. Kent, re-teamed two years later for the similarly-themed "Miami Exposé," also reviewed on this site, which suffers from considerably weaker casting and even more ludicrous plotting.