A lot of fun.

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

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Torchy Blane.. Playing with Dynamite is the final entry in Warner's popular B-movie run of the late 1930s. Blane was the inspiration for Superman's Lois Lane, the name partly drawn from Lola Lane, who played the character in one outing. Glenda Farrell was the only true Blane, though, appearing in seven of the nine entries and getting it supremely, effortlessly right each time. Absent here, Farrell is obviously missed, but Jane Wyman does an unexpectedly strong job of deputising, and Allen Jenkins is very good as her cop boyfriend, replacing Barton McLane. Absent-minded desk sergeant George Guhl is also elsewhere (literally this time), but ever-present Tom Kennedy is back for more as Gahagan, the soft detective with a yen for composing verse. The key for the series was really the performances. The first Blane film, Smart Blonde, benefited from snappy, clever dialogue, but generally the scripts were rushed, meaning the plots were full of holes and the patter erratic. Here, the story is better than usual, with Blane getting slung in jail to befriend gangster's moll Sheila Bromley, though her tactic of getting there - raising 11 false fire alarms - is slightly questionable, and her supposed rivalry with the police evaporates after about 10 minutes. Still, it's tense and enjoyable, with an abrupt ending that works quite well.

The trouble with all those Torchy Blane movies were that they were all too similar in plot and style. In other words, if you've seen one, you've seen them all.Once again, Torchy finds a way to nab a criminal for her policeman pal Steve McBride, with the roles now played by JANE WYMAN and ALLEN JENKINS. Needless to say, they're not a convincing match. Wyman does all of her cutesy tricks that she employed during her early days at Warner Bros., and Jenkins plays a dumb cop in his usual style, for laughs. TOM KENNEDY is still on hand as the bumbling helpmate of the two, this time involved in a wrestling match that spins the film toward its finale.Fast moving entertainment, it's a B-film that played the second half of a double feature in 1939. Apparently, it didn't catch on as well as the series did with Glenda Farrell in the lead, so it became the last film of the Torchy Blane series.

I love Glenda Farrell. She is always fun, and she's fun in this series. But the plots are thrown rogether so quickly they frequently make no sense.Lola Lane was a ghastly substitute in the Panama outing.In this one, Jane Wyman and Alan Jenkins seem an unlikely couple, to say the very least. However, it has a linear plot that makes good sense and is both exciting and funny (when it wants to be.)Jane Wyman: such a strange career. She is heartbreaking in "The Yearling" and deserves her Oscar for "Johnny Belinda." And she was a charming light comic before and even these two.Then she got ultra-serious and made those schmaltzy women's pictures. Douglas Sirk? OK. Fine craftsman. But most of Wyman's output after the early 1950s is a disappointment, though it kept her in the public eye and surely made a good deal of money.

Jane Wyman and Allen Jenkins team up as the reporter/detective pair in their first but also the series final episode. Wyman looks great but simply does not have the wisecracking hard-boiled presence of the annoying Glenda Farrell. Jenkins is fair but Barton MacLane is better.As in the rest of the series and many other films of this type, the amateur is a necessary component of bringing the criminal to justice. Torchy goes undercover in jail and on the lam in order to meet up with the notorious Denver Eddie. By the end of the movie she is in the arms of fiancé Detective Lieutenant Steve McBride. Tom Kennedy steals most of the movie by playing a former Navy wrester turned policeman. In reality Tom was a boxer and he carries off his match as Harry the Horse with Bone Crusher (played by Tiny Roebuck in his final on-screen performance) with good comedic style. If you have ever wondered what the protagonists in a wrestling match say to each other while they are otherwise locked into their imposing holds, watch this movie.