Midnight Court is an incredibly fun and straightforward crime film with the occasional bit of courtroom drama thrown in for good measure.
It's one of those movies where you can pretty much predict the entire Story from beginning to end.
You can see where certain characters are going, how they're going to react with various scenarios and who's going to come out on top. Usually I consider that a negative but there's something just so wonderfully simple and fun about this movie that works really well.
It kind of feels like a basic episode of Law & Order or dare I say it ''Night Court''. I don't know what this film has any connection to that TV show (Most likely not)
The film is based around this guy Victor. He's a former attorney who got screwed over by either a bunch of bureaucracy or corruption within the criminal justice system. Now he's some washed-up has-been sitting in a bar drinking his sorrows away.
He's approached by these Thugs who want to hire him to work on their criminal business. At first you're kind of confused as to why they want this guy because it's implied that he doesn't have a job anymore and he can't really work as an attorney if he's drunk all the time.
I guess the leader of the operation just wants to make sure that he keeps his mind on the bottle it's a guarantee that he'll never be harassed by this former attorney ever again.
But as luck would have it there's a police raid on this bar and Victor along with most of the other delinquents are taken downtown to be prosecuted for the most minor crimes. Rather that be public drunkenness, loitering or vacancy.
During his court case Victor starts the mouth off to the judge and the entire judicial system. Blaming them for his current condition and accusing them of being nothing more than a corrupt organisation only interested in persecuting the little people.
He gets so wired up on his little tangent that he almost blurts out that he's a communist*. Or something to that effect.
Luckily for him, he ends up fainting and the stenographer who was working at the courtroom decides to take him into her home because she was the guy's former husband.
I guess the judge didn't really care about the guy and just let him go off. That part of the movies never explained.
Anyways Victor wakes up to a very polite ex-wife who explains to him that he really ought to get himself together and stop drinking his life away. But Victor at this point is pretty depressed and he's completely disillusioned with the current American justice system. So he decides to go off the rails and start defending the local Mobsters who had approached them earlier.
And boy howdy does he get his Groove Back.
Victor is not only able to secure small-time Court victories for his newly-acquired monster buddies. But he's even able to get a few guys off of murder.
Their empire grows to unprecedented Heights. Mainly in the car smuggling business where most of their money is being made.
Now you think that Victor's ex-wife would have a major problem with all of this but she's kind of lukewarm on the whole thing.
Claiming that Victor said he was going to do this from the beginning and he's just sticking to his word.
That is until this one kid end up dying who needlessly got involved in the criminal underworld; coming to the big city with no money to his name. This is ultimately what sets is Victor on a different path and has him prosecute the Mobsters in the end.
I'm honestly surprised with how well paced this movie was. At only an hour and 3 minutes long I was expecting a bit of a slog with some fun and amusing gangster moments, mixed in with maybe one courtroom drama.
Then the rest of the movie being incredibly boring hallways or factory settings with mob characters aiming guns at the protagonist for 5 to 10 minutes.
The movie doesn't go down any of those routes. Instead of focus is on a never advancing story, it has a bunch of clever set pieces to set up passing of time and how the Mobsters were able to get away with their smuggling rackets to begin with.
At the very end of this film The Monsters have a big stick up scene as they try to flee the courtroom. And really it's a dumb thing for them to try and do. Even if Victor's ex-wife hadn't noticed the guns earlier and warned the police of the attempted murder and get away; You'd still have a bunch of idiots brandishing guns in a courtroom.
These places are naturally covered by policeman. And let's say you do take the room hostage. Where the heck are you going to go? There sure as heck not getting outside of that building.
Conclusion: A surprisingly entertaining criminal film. Filled with simple but interesting characters and it's intriguing enough story to keep you entertained. It doesn't pretend to be anything more than it is.
*Calling yourself a Communist in America today would probably land you in hot water within most places. But to say so in the 1930s during the original Red Scare!
People were super scared the Reds were coming to get them.
Really it was quite a dumb thing for them to be scared of. Both the red scares were over exaggerated but the first one was especially so. Communist at this point could barely wipe their own ass. They didn't have the ability to infiltrate a country and conquer it with internal Revolution. They could barely keep their own countries afloat.
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