Steineded How sad is this?

ShangLuda Admirable film.

Lucia Ayala It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

jbacks3-1 I love pre-code gangster movies! While Warner's is the indisputable king, MGM threw out all the stops in what appears as an attempt to go head to head with Warner's in making a crime drama. The results are remarkable. The stars here are the cops, something WB didn't focus on until 3 years later with G-Men. Walter Huston does a remarkable job as a police captain whose badge is on the rise but whose not afraid to get his hands dirty. His career is endangered by his reckless, irresponsible younger brother (well played by Wallace Ford, very early in his career), also a cop, who's got an eye for hard-bitten gangland moll Jean Harlow. There's several fantastic scenes: Harlow's memorable line-up, Harlow's hoochie koochie dance, running outdoor gun battles and an outrageous final face-to-face confrontation between the cops and Hersholt's gang in a restaurant. Judging by the 1930's police tactics depicted, it'd be a miracle if anyone on the force survived till retirement. Cops continuously run fearlessly headlong into hails of lead without a thought to taking cover. Look for a young Mickey Rooney and those twin girls (the 14-year old Crane twins) that briefly announced Hal Roach's opening Our Gang credits as Huston's kids. Huston probably drew upon this role for the extremely weird Gabriel Over the White House the following year. Seeing Jean Hersholt (by all accounts one of the most lovable guys in Hollywood--- yeesh, he's got a humanitarian award named in his honor) playing a greasy Capone-esquire crime lord stretches disbelief, but at this point in his career he was considered a 'heavy,' and image that would drastically change over the next decade when he became synonymous with kindly Dr. Gillespie. Beast of the City gives you all this plus creative pre-Miranda police interviewing techniques--- it's cool to see those great 1929-31 Lincoln police cars racing around chasing bad guys with their blaring one-way radios. Beast of the City ranks with the best of the genre and thanks to TCM and TiVo I've seen it a dozen times... this is excellent! Rates a 10!

GreenHammer I popped this in one day not really knowing what to expect out of it. I came in with no prior knowledge of what the movie was even about. I didn't' expect all that much, so i was pleasantly surprised.I think the thing that stuck with me the most about this picture was that, although slightly dated, it still holds up quite well today. The film attempts to tell the classic cops .vs. gangsters story from the cops point of view, and the measures they needed to go to wipe out gang violence and crime at that time.The film starts out fresh but gets bogged down in a tedious, and borderline pointless courtroom trial. The ham factor is through the roof here. The performances throughout the rest of the picture, particularly Huston and Harlow, are very good however.The ending, like so many of my reviewing compatriots mentioned, is pretty shocking for it's time, but is hurt by the terribly lame lines before the action starts.The Bottom Line - Nothing too special about the movie, but strong performances, a decent script, and some great scenes warrant ***/****

psteier Really very well done, though the ending has to be seen to be believed. It seems to start a bit slowly, but it really packs in a lot of action, humor and human interest. The film that made Jean Harlow a big star.

Jason-38 This is one of the grittiest of the pre-Production Code features. It is important to realize that just two years later, with the implementation of the rewritten Production Code in 1934, this film could not have been made.As with any piece of popular entertainment that is nearly 70 years old, there are going to be dated elements. What is more important is how relatively modern this film feels, especially compared to the films made under the Production Code after 1934. The story is a hard slice of life, and it will not suit all tastes. This is especially true for those who have been too conditioned by Production Code features and television.The ending has been compared to Sam Peckinpah's THE WILD BUNCH and Don Siegel's DIRTY HARRY, and not without cause. However, try to imagine yourself as a member of the original theatrical release audience in 1932. There would have been very little to prepare you for it, apart from DOORWAY TO HELL, LITTLE CAESAR, PUBLIC ENEMY, and SCARFACE. The difference here is that the story is told from the point of view of the men in law enforcement. It focuses on something that was common knowledge at the time, that prohibition had corrupted law enforcement far beyond the scope of anything the public had ever known.The remedy for corruption that this film prescribes is very strong medicine indeed. You may not like it, but I defy you not to think about it for a long time after you've seen it.