An attorney is investigating this strange stock company who is believed to be involved in fraud. The people who run the stock company decide to get the attorney whacked. But this draws the attention of a newspaper man who starts digging around and inevitably uncovers the secret and publishes it to the world.
And intermix throughout the story are friends and loved ones all working for and against each other, each trying to figure out what's going on. Especially this one woman (Evelyn Brent) who's sleeping with just about everybody and is constantly manipulating the entire situation. She seems to fancy this Latin fellow the most. But even he is just a pawn for her as she moves from one guy to the next either requiring money or possibly information. This film missed a golden opportunity to have her be one of the true Master culprits behind the whole stock fraud.
I almost wish the movie would have spent more time on the fraud itself. Showing how different people wear going around to steal stocks and other forms of information to manipulate their company into giving the money. Maybe show the consequence of how it all blows up in their face and the entire company begins to go under. Although there was a fun scene at the beginning when one business executive gives to another $20,000 to start manipulating the system for him. And it shows the guy receiving the money calling up Associates of his own promising them $10,000 for their help to which they then call other associates who continuously divide the money amongst each other. Until we get to the bottom. This Latin guy (J. Carrol Naish) who receives a measly $1,000. All these people are working for the same goal and yet only two or three of them are going to have any true financial success from it.
This movie has some strange pacing and editing problems. I both felt that they could have spent more time developing the relationships between Evelyn and all the different men she was connected with and at the same time I felt the film spent too much time with her and them anyways. But we never get any real good information out of it. The editing is very problematic. Some of that's just the fault of time as the print has been cut, wrinkled and worn out with time.
But then you get scenes in a room is pitch black so you can't see anything you can only hear what the characters are saying and the camera will sit on that same shot for (and I counted it) 5 minutes.
The weird editing makes the entire film a bit difficult to follow. Part of that could also just be my plebeian brain. Still the first 20 minutes are quite interesting. Between all the Espionage and the setup to the assassination of some of the key actors. The one newspaper reporter even used a real life ''dummy'' to stage an assassination attempt to acquire a bullet from the gun of a guy he suspected was the murderer. It's quite the ingenious little stunt. If only the rest of the movie could be that good.
The film does have a significant amount of camera swipe changes. All these different little patterns to show a transition from one scene to the next. It has a tiny bit of flavor to an overall average film. The scene with the three best friends and one of their kids playing with a train set is kind of fun. The three adults keep screwing around with the train making it go back and forth while the little kids sits in frustration because he can't play with it.
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