Flat black, flat bad. Tierney is baseline, plain and harsh. Tierney is a menace. Nothing like this today. For all its devotion to sin, American film shies away from really bad news. Fast-talking, money-grabbing fops like Scorsese & Tarantino pretend to have guts. Somehow this leaked through. How?

Lawrence Tierney plays Dillinger, who was America's Public Enemy Number One for a short while in the 1930s. His crime spree is documented in the film along with his demise.The film is short and rolls along as a series of events and that is possibly its downfall. If it was a longer film, we may have got more depth in terms of character study and possibly had more time with some of the other characters. As it goes, the film is OK, there are good scenes and Tierney pulls off a menacing portrayal of a threatening gangster, whether it is a true depiction or not.Films like this make me go onto Wikipedia and read up about the characters – always a great past-time for afterwards.

Amazing that 60+ years ago the low-budget Monogram Pictures made this Dillinger movie 9 times better than Universal's 2009 sorry looking mess, "Public Enemies." This 1945 movie grabs you from the opening credits and keeps your interest for the entire 70 minutes. That's right, 70 minutes. There's no need to pad this story into a 2 hour + boring mess.To begin with, and all-important, it's true that Lawrence Tierney was born to play Dillinger. He's perfect. Johnny Depp maybe was born to play Jack Sparrow, but he stumbles around looking stupid in the 2009 film.Just everything about the 1945 clicks like clockwork. Just one example is the simple-but-effective shootout at the Biograph Theater. The 2009 film ought get special honors for incredible multiple layers of Bad Film-making 101. In the 1945 gut-level film we have a bored and broke Dillinger taking his girl to the neighborhood movie for a few laughs. In the old days people went in and out of movie theaters all day, not at starting time. Thus when Dillinger steps outside there are just two people leaving, not the 500 marching out in "Public Enemies." So the FBI can easily spray him with bullets without hitting other folks.This fine Monogram Picture can be found on Netflix and other places. No need to settle for today's silly trash.

This movie has several big things going for it: its short, fast-moving and just plain entertaining. How much more do you want? Also, Lawrence Tierney was made for gangster/film noir movies. He looks the part, acts the part, and was a thug in real life, too. Who better than to portray famous criminal John Dillinger as a cold-blooded killer? This was Tierney's starring debut and it was a good vehicle for him. I also enjoyed Edmund Lowe as the gang boss prior to Tierney taking over. I enjoyed the supporting cast, too: Anne Jeffreys, Elisha Cook Jr., Eduardo Cianelli and Marc Lawrence. All of them add to this film.I was glad they concentrated on the crime part of the film and didn't go crazy with a sappy romance. However, I am sorry Jeffreys wasn't on screen more often. She had the '40s look, if I ever saw it.