There is very little of interest to be discovered in this basically mindless Canadian production, technically a science-fictional tale set in a future large and dystopic city, wherein no sympathy can be readily found for any of the principal characters. We know that the city is a dystopia due to an active smoke machine that emits its murky product throughout the affair, and there are also small fires burning in alleys of what is in reality an industrial district of Toronto.
This movie is so low-budget, and the cast generates so much goodwill, that you have to be kind to it. Plot is nothing special, but told with enough of a twist, and with enough smiles, that it deserves notice.
Victor McLaglen has a ball as Big Tim Channing in this forgotten, yet enjoyable, 1950's gangster movie. With all the stand-by's (Frank Ferguson as crusading D.
Veteran actor Victor McLaglen who goes back to the silent era commands the attention in this typically violent mid-1950's crime drama where he shows foster son John Baer how things were done in the old days while trying to reform his protection racket business as Baer strives to turn his life around and need a respectable life. Things become complicated when Baer becomes involved with Kathleen Crowley, the sister of his college pal Nicolas Coster and daughter of an influential judge.
One only has to get about five minutes into the film before realizing that it is derivative of about two-dozen other films----low-ranking gangster adopts and educates a young street hoodlum only to have his protégé turn against him.Dan Mason (Jimmy Grohman), a twelve-year-old newsboy, is an expert at figuring all the angles; so, when Kink (billed as Kay Kuter), veteran bartender at Billy's Steak House, catches him winning a big jackpot in the battered old slot machines that belong to seedy Tim Channing (Victor McLaglen), he not only defies them to do anything about it but shows Tim how he can corner the slot-machine racket and, at the same time, put his big-racketeer competitors Tony Finetti (Anthony Caruso) and Angelo Di Bruno (Richard Reeves) out of the running.
This movie is driven by one of the characters' supposedly brilliant schemes. Since these are either unexplained or senseless, and the rest of the script is dull and plodding, the simplest advice is "skip it.
