This is an okay, rather lighthearted crime/newspaper picture, not at all the grim movie one would expect from the title. Its main detriment is Brenda Marshall, who has zero chemistry with George Brent (looking a bit seedy, but a bit like a second-string Clark Gable), an unattractive profile, and a very tight, cold, humourless manner. What William Holden saw in her, God alone knows. But Brent is as smooth as ever, and there are old friends like Roscoe Karns, Percy Halton, and the chillingly believable Eduardo Ciannelli, with his face rapidly collapsing from Joker-style phony bonhomie to ice-cold murder.The plot doesn't take itself very seriously, and is sometimes indecipherable, but there are plenty of amusing scenes. But, though Brenda is unsympathetic, the treatment of her, expressing the 1940s idea of the "right" way to live, still has a nasty taste. Three times during the movie she faints dead away because of what she hears, sees, or fears she is about to see (ie, women are not tough enough to be reporters). Then, at the end of the movie, she says she won't give up her career after marriage to George Brent, that they won't have children for a long time. His gesture to the camera shows that he will make sure that's not the case. While a similar "adult" joke at the end of Bachelor Mother was very cute, this is quite unpleasant. It says that Brent will make his wife pregnant against her will and without her knowledge (a very unpleasant picture comes to mind). At the time this was considered cute too, but it sure isn't now.

George Brent (newsman), Brenda Marshall (reporter), Gene Lockhart (Lonesome Club manager), Roscoe Karns (reporter), Paul Harvey (publisher), Eduardo Ciannelli (Greer), Frank Richards (Scotty), Fred Kelsey (radio fan), Erville Alderson (Crowder), George Meeker (Cummings), Edith Barrett (Lucille), Jack Carr (No-Neck), Joseph Crehan (warden), Charles Halton (Gates), Dick Elliott (Meeker), Olin Howland (caretaker), Harry Hayden (Judge Hardacre), Joe Downing (Varney), Tom Dugan (trusty), Don DeFore (reporter), John Dilson.Director: JO GRAHAM. Screenplay: Fred Niblo, Jr., Hector Chevigny. Story: Roy Chanslor. Photography: Tony Gaudio, James Van Trees. Film editor: David Weisbart. Produced for Warner Bros by famous New York newsman Mark Hellinger, this film used elements from Hi, Nellie!, Final Edition, The Girl on the Front Page and other Roy Chanslor yarns. U.S. release: 10 October 1942. Australian release: 22 February 1945. 77 minutes. COMMENT: A brisk re-make of "Front Page Woman" (1935), this fast, funny and most delightfully and unexpectedly facetious newspaper yarn has all the makings of a cult classic. Directed by former Michael Curtiz assistant, Jo Graham, in a furiously stylish Curtiz style, the movie features a host of our favorite character players at their most ingratiating. Despite hot competition from Ciannelli, Lockhart and Hayden, it's Frank Richards, however, who walks away – or rather dances off – with the picture. His zest in swinging Lonesome Marshall around the club is the gem of gems!

"You Can't Escape Forever" is a great title for a film, although I'm not convinced it fits this story. This movie is really crisply done. All the scenes clip along and never linger too long. The reading of the lines by the actors are so rapid fire that Frank Fox the dialogue director must have worked overtime. The opening execution scene made me chuckle. There always seems to be a thunderstorm happening when someone is about to be strapped to the electric chair. In this case they did use the atmosphere as part of the story and not simply a clichéd mood device. I didn't find "Forever" a waste of time, but there was nothing about it that will linger in my movie memory banks for an extended period of time.

The entire film uses that hectic non-stop dialogue style that was far more frequent in the black and white days. It makes it kind of difficult to feel involved, more like you are watching a comedy show than a film. And the means with which the main story is introduced, in the same blase fashion, doesn't lend it any gravity. In the end you feel you have watched a long episode of an old sit-com.