Cliff Taylor (George Raft) and his pal Chuck Martin (Humphrey Bogart) are released together from Sing Sing. Cliff wants to regenerate and have a straight life while Chuck has no intention of changing his lifestyle. Cliff wants to support his mother Mrs. Taylor (Flora Robson) and his younger son Tim Taylor (William Holden) that can not afford to get married with his girlfriend Peggy (Jane Bryan). However he is discriminated by the society and has difficulties to get a job. When he sees Tim thinking to switch to a life if crime, Cliff seeks out Chuck and decides to join his gang to heist banks and make money to buy a garage for Tim. What will happen to the Taylor brothers? "Invisible Stripes" is an entertaining gangster film with the story of an ex-con that wants to go straight during his parole but is discriminated by the society, returning to the crime. The fate of Cliff Taylor is predictable. The greatest attractions are probably William Holden very young is his second credited role and Humphrey Bogart in a support role. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): Not Available on Blu-Ray or DVD.

It's high time this movie is released on DVD, it was never released before on VHS. This is one of my favorite Warner Bros. gangster films that stars both George Raft & Humphrey Bogart. I'm a fan of both actors & the gangster genre. But this isn't just another typical "knock down, drag out, car chasing, gun blasting gangster film, it's also a social commentary on just how tough it really was to live in depression era 1930's America. In the early 1930's public enemies like Al Capone, John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, Machine Gun Kelly etc. were celebrated folk hero's & the public had no respect for law & order until G-men like Melvin Purviss, Elliot Ness & Thomas E. Dewey cracked down & stopped these colorful characters dead in their tracks. Only then the tide turned & the people had a new found respect & admiration for law & order.Invisible Stripes opens in Sing Sing prison with Cliff Taylor (Raft) & Chuck Martin (Bogart) on their way out of prison. Raft chooses the straight & narrow path while Bogart chooses to take up where he left off as a criminal. Both men have justifiable reasons for their paths. Bogie reasons that the odds are stacked up too high against them to go straight because of the economic hardship & the way the system is set up. A paroled convict only has a short time to get a job or end up back in jail. Raft soon finds out just how tough getting a job is & how cold & unfair the outside world is to an ex-con. He is greeted with suspicion, distrust & joblessness, his girlfriend quickly rejects him as soon as he gets out. Because Raft is an ex-con now he's not good enough for her anymore.Raft has a kid brother named Tim played by a young & "very different" William Holden, Tim is a grease monkey & dreams of a better life & wants a garage of his own. When the going gets tough he starts to become rebellious but Raft discourages him from following in his convict footsteps & beats some sense into him. Raft needs to get from "Rags to Riches" quickly & looks up Bogart & decides to join Chucks gang in a series of bank robberies just to get enough jack saved up to buy an auto shop for him & his kid brother (Holden) to keep him straight. After Cliff quits the gang in a subsequent botched up heist Chuck uses Tim's garage as a hideout until the heat cools off. Chuck lies to Tim by making him think that Cliff was in on the armoured car heist to assure his silence. After helping Chuck & his gang escape Tim is later arrested by the police & thrown in jail, placing Raft in the middle between a loyalty to Chuck & his kid brother Tim. But Cliff will not let his kid brother take the rap for Chuck & his gang & convinces him to rat on Chuck & the other gangsters by identifying them at the police station. Chuck helps Cliff anyway against the other gangsters out to shoot Raft for betraying them & Bogart even takes a bullet for Raft as both are shot & killed. Bogart is a likable bad guy in this movie unlike his other gangsters during this period like "Angels With Dirty Faces" & "The Roaring Twenties" We all sympathize with Raft's character as he suffers much hardship, injustice & humiliation from the outside world because he's wearing invisible stripes. Bogart's role as Chuck Martin is also sympathetic in a way because of the bond & close friendship that grew between the 2 men while they were in prison. It was tragic to see both actors getting killed in the end. If you're a fan of Raft & Bogart & the gangster genre this is a good watch. Recommended !

(There are Spoilers) Being sprung from the big house ex-cons and good friends Cliff Taylor and Chuck Martin, George Raft & Humphrey Bogart, go their separate ways. Cliff determined to go straight and become a law abiding citizen with Chuck going back to his gang of hoods that the left for a five year forced vacation in the clink.Cliff coming back home get's his first taste of reality, as being a man with a criminal record, with the girl that he left behind Sue, Margot Stevenson, dropping him like a hot potato. Sue seeing that there's no future for her in hitching up with the unwanted, by society, and unemployable ex-convict. Cliff is also a bit disturbed with his hot-headed younger brother Tim, William Holden, wanting to follow in his footsteps as a hoodlum. Feeling that it's the only way for him to get out of the hopeless poverty that he finds himself in working on and off as a grease monkey whenever he can find work at the local garages.We see the hardships that Cliff has to contend with as an ex-con no matter what job he get's through the help of his kindly and caring parole officer Masters,Henry O'Neill. From a grease monkey, like his brother Tim, to a loader of heavy equipment at a plant where he's forced to lay out a fellow worker who was breaking his chops.Finally getting a job as a stock-boy Cliff starts to become a productive citizen working his way up to a stock clerk. But is later fired when he's accused, but later found innocent, of knocking off a fur store for $40,000.00. Meanwhile Tim feeling that he can't make it big in the world of business and finance for himself as well as his girl Peggy ,Gane Bryan, goes out and with a few friends and beats up and mugs a drunk for $6.00. With Cliff finding out what Tim did he locked him up in his room and proceeds to knock some common sense into his hard and pig-headed skull.It's with him getting all fed up with all the obstacles thrown in his path that keeps Cliff from straightening himself out that he reluctantly goes to the local bookie joint when he get in touch with Chuck, now a big shot in the New York mob, for a job with his gang as a bank robber. Knocking of a number of banks and armored cars Cliff sends his share of the stolen loot to Tim telling him that he got himself a job as a door to door salesman selling trackers and farming equipment to farmers in upstate New York.Tim using the money that his big brother Cliff mailed him opens up a garage but as you would have expected it turns out that he get's unloved with Chuck's and Cliff's gang. That happens after they tried to rob an armored car ending up with a number of people being shot and killed. The Chuck Martin Gang making their getaway to Tim's garage and then having the scared and confused Tim bamboozled into helping them. Chuck tells him that his brother Cliff was also involved in the shootout which was a lie; Cliff had already broke with Chuck's gang and went back to being an honest and law abiding citizen.Cliff finding out about his brother Tim being now involved in a crime that can possibly land him in the Sing Sing electric chair, there were a number of innocent persons killed goes to the police and makes a deal with them. The deal is to have the now in custody Tim identify Chuck and his gang that in return the D.A would drop all charges against him. Cliff now finally realizes that he put Tim in this deadly position by him going back to his criminal ways. He now has no choice but to later confront Chuck & Co. and with taking the blame for Tim's fingering them on himself he'll thus let the chips fall where they may and take everything, good or bad, thats coming to him.

You're not missing anything if you skip INVISIBLE STRIPES. None of the players are seen to any particular advantage--not boyish looking WILLIAM HOLDEN or tough guy GEORGE RAFT, paired as hot-headed brothers who can't seem to get away from a life of crime. Raft plays a parolee who tries keeping his kid brother Holden clean, while at the same time tempted to join a gang of thieves when he can't seem to hold down a respectable job.JANE BRYAN, FLORA ROBSON and HUMPHREY BOGART are fine in supporting roles but nothing about their work is liable to stick in the memory. Bogart plays his typical hoodlum role, writhing on the floor under a hail of bullets as was his usual destiny in these sort of things.Bogart, of course, came into his own once he in inherited all the roles George Raft foolishly turned down--including THE MALTESE FALCON. Raft underplays his role here to such an extent that he looks bored with the whole thing--which he probably was.This is strictly a routine Warner crime melodrama with uninspired script and direction and easily one you can skip despite a couple of well-staged shootouts.