KnotMissPriceless Why so much hype?

Ploydsge just watch it!

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

Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

SnoopyStyle In the heat of an election, big politician Paul Madvig (Brian Donlevy) decides to refuse gangster Nick Varna to clean up his image. His right hand man Ed Beaumont (Alan Ladd) doesn't support it or his wish to support reform candidate Ralph Henry. Madvig expects to have the key to Henry but Beaumont warns him that it might turn out to be a glass key. Madvig is enchanted with the fiery Henry daughter Janet (Veronica Lake). Henry's son Taylor is a degenerate gambler and the boyfriend to Paul's sister Opal 'Snip' Madvig. Taylor is murdered and Ed finds the body. Madvig is non-chalant. Nick starts spreading rumors that Paul Madvig might have been the killer.Veronica Lake is the personification of that noir style damsel. She's got that cool demeanor and that swooping hair style. Alan Ladd is the male equivalent in this movie which comes off more stiff than compelling. It would be better if he has a bigger presence or more animated. I do like that everybody has murky motivations and the murder mystery is interesting. I don't like the stiff Alan Ladd performance. He just has that one facial expression.

edwagreen Talk about plot twists, this picture has got it all and then some.Crooked politician endorsing a reform candidate and he loves the latter's daughter. (Veronica Lake) His partner (Alan Ladd) also loves the girl. The reformer (Moroni Olsen) has a son with a gambling problem. (Richard Denning). Before long, the son is found dead and suspicion shifts to our politician (Brian Donlevy) since the dead son was fond of his sister, a very mature Bonita Granville. Talk about Peyton Place, this picture may have it beat.In addition, we have William Bendix as an enforcer to always evil Joseph Calleia, looking to frame Donlevy for the murder.Wait until you see how Ladd smokes out the real killer by accusing someone else in the end.Bendix is excellent in his role and steals every scene that he is in.

jzappa Dashiell Hammett's writing style is by and large acknowledged as being exceedingly beneficial to movie interpretations. It's handsomely evocative of atmosphere and situation and the angle is practically always that of a neutral onlooker, a stand-in for the audience. The Glass Key and Miller's Crossing signify two distinguishing readings of Hammett. The former is a straightforward conversion, the latter takes basics from Red Harvest and then sets them afloat in a plot which reverberates with a virtual mirror image of The Glass Key but also wanders gamely into original ideas.This second and better known adaptation of the classic Hammett novel, released just seven years after the first, focuses more on the political stratagem and one particular murder which functions to throw a dainty milieu of suspicion and caginess into disarray, flaunting a murder mystery accompanied by a backdrop of politics, gambling kingpins, flirtation and almost farcically eager brutality. A vital part of Stuart Heisler's almost Hawksian version is the casting of Ladd as Ed. Hammett wrote about commanding but aloof guys, who demonstrate a stiff and closely controlled style of code and who seldom show feeling or vulnerability. His hard cases were pessimistic, solidly committed to their work, unscrupulous, plucky, and apparently not influenced to feelings. Ladd wears some of these characteristics with his physical look, taut and severe, keeps his actions in check to look cool and unruffled. He punches only one character, though it's just a calculated move instead of a ceremony of bluster. The only actual aggression that Ed makes use of is an unsurprisingly brusque and snappy reply to the aggravation of Richard Denning.The physical stiffness and steadfast temperament of this character is a bit diluted by Ladd's compromises in playing Ed as good-humored and affable. His recuperation from a savage pounding becomes a spell where he, like 007, flirts with nurses. The pressure of Ladd's assumed role, an up-and-coming matinée icon and celebrity, appears to have permeated the portrayal of Ed and modified the Hammett protagonist into something resembling a Hollywood negotiation. On the other hand, Brian Donlevy takes advantage of his character being the political organizer who wrestled his way up from bottom, while Ladd is just his henchman and sounding board. Veronica Lake is the fickle daughter of the gubernatorial nominee who initially makes a play for Donlevy but dithers between him and Ladd, while Joseph Calleia has the gambling house franchise throughout the metropolis. Merged skillfully, the effect is an amusing thriller.The most thrilling, as well as the funniest, and most loaded scene is definitely the epic battering incurred by Ladd in a spell of amusingly forward sado-masochism as William Bendix bashfully pleads for his "little rubber ball" to spring back for more. Filmed and performed with misleading airiness, the scene is key to the film, parading a sensual riptide that plants ongoing suspicions throughout. Tinkering with his customary pokerface as he twists cagily through a labyrinth of political intrigues and underworld traps in the name of his superior, Ladd stays just as ice-covered whether conveying his passion for Lake or his allegiance to Donlevy. The effect is a taunting sexual vagueness, significantly augmented, at least until the excuse finale, by the fact that Hammett's protagonist, here thick-skinned enough to confess a readiness to throw Lake under the bus if required in furtherance of his intentions, has been case-hardened by being abridged into a star mouthpiece for movie-going audiences. But man, love that William Bendix. His entire role is comprised of wanting nothing more than to beat Ladd into a pulp, and is insatiably enjoyable at being a big lug with nothing more on his mind.

sol ***SPOILERS*** Incredibly confusing film noir political corruption crime drama with Baltimore political king maker Paul Madvig, Brian Donlevy, getting himself into hot water by falling in love, after she belted him, with reform candidate for governor Ralph Henry's, Moroni Olsen, feisty daughter Janet, Veronica Lake. It' Medvig's support for Henry that has one of his closes confidants gangster Nick Varna, Joseph Callela, turn on him when in order to show good faith to Henry Madvig has his illegal gambling house raided by the police.Varna gets his big chance to destroy Madvig's future plans when his 18 year old sister Opal's, Mararet Hayes, boyfriend Taylor, Richard Denning, is found dead with his head cracked open outside Medvig's house. As it turned out Taylor is the good for nothing son, who hasn't done an honest days work in his entire life, of Ralph Henry whom Medvig threatens to kill if he ever saw his sister again! Using newspaper tycoon Clyde Matthews, Arthur Loft, who's deeply in debt to him to implicated Medvig in Taylor's death Varna plans to destroy Medvig and thus keep him from destroy his criminal enterprise in the state of Maryland!It's Medvig's close friend and former hood who's now going straight Ed Beaumont, Alan Ladd, who sees or thinks he sees through this whole sham in Janet putting on an act in marrying Medvig in order to get the goods on him and get him convicted in the murder of her brother Taylor. Beaumont also has to contend with two of Varna's hoods Jeff & Rusty, William Bendix & Eddie Marr, who after kidnapping him worked Beaumont over so badly that he after escaping from them , by jumping through a sky window and landing on his head, ends up in the hospital with a number of broken bones ribs as well as a fractured skull.***SPOILERS*** the movie, or its plot, really goes off the deep end when a now fully recovered Beaumont, who was practically on his death bed a few moments before, gets the brutal and drunk Jeff to finally to admit, after serving his a number of free drinks, that he in fact killed one of Varna's hoods Sloss, Dane Clark, who was at the scene of Taylor's "accidental" death. And the person who killed him wasn't Paul Medvig! The ending is one for the books in what a mess of a storyline the film "The Glass Key" has in revealing just who killed Taylor and at the same time who wanted Medvig to take the rap for it! By the time the truth came out Varna was already history so it didn't matter to him anyway if Medvig did or didn't kill Taylor but it did matter to Beaumont. Not needing to marry Janet anymore in advancing his career in politics in that her father was now no longer a candidate for state governor Medvig gives his blessings, as if she really needed them, for Janet to hook up with his good friend Ed Beaumont. It's by Taylor's killer being exposed and arrested Beaumont now knows that Janet isn't the conniving and and back stabbing person that he always thought that she was.