I think I've done it, I believe I have found the world's most neutral detective story.
It does absolutely everything by the book.
It's got a basic narrator that only pops in from time to time. It's got a hearty old Chief detective who's from the old country (Ireland) along with a young (but not too young) street detective who has to go out and find all the physical clues and an onslaught of interesting, mysterious and occasionally kooky suspects to investigate the case over.
There's a young woman by the name of Miss Dixon who's knocked out by two mysterious assailant who then decide to drown her body in a bathtub to make it look like a suicide. But modern Logistics confirms that it was anything but.
Not only is there evidence of a struggle but her entire body is covered in various bruises and her mouth and lungs are full of chloroform.
And so the investigation starts in a city of eight million people a handful detectives must find their would-be killer. Or is that will eventually decide would-be killers.
As time goes on they'll find any clues some helpful some a hindrance. The publicity around the killing starts to grow as well as newspapers start to grip on to it.
Strange new elements start to seep in.
Including an issue of stolen jewelry and a connection to older murders associated with this now mysterious group of men who are yet unnamed but no nits large the public all the same.
Peppered throughout this entire case are occasional little glimpses at the private life of a few of our detectives.
Including our would-be street detective whose wife is incredibly forceful that he beat the ever-living crap out of there son for disobeying orders.
I mean even by the standards of the forties she's a little headstrong on this.
The husband doesn't want to hit his kid and it's not like he did anything horrible.
He wandered off to a part of town a block away that he shouldn't have.
It's bad but it's not bringing the police to your door bad.
But still I only bring it up because this is the only point in the movie where it matters.
I was expecting there to be some sort of payoff with this later on.
Maybe our private dick get this gun stolen from a man in the shot. But that doesn't happen.
He does have his gun taken from him by this weird wrestler man whose amongst one of the murderers.
But he decides to just punch the guy in the back of the head and knock him out. Using something known as a Rabbet punch* which apparently is legal.
Really the boxer is the only guy in this movie that feels unique or different from any other detective film.
He supposedly an acrobatic boxer who likes to play the harmonica. And he becomes one of the Prime suspects for the murders later on.
I'm not even entirely sure why that's the case. The guys at the beginning didn't look like the boxer although it might be linked to that secondary murder involving a drunk man who fell into the lake. I kind of forgot about that part.
Unfortunately I ended up watching this movie in two parts because my computer decided to trash halfway through.
So despite the mundane storyline I'd still consider this to be a good detective movie.
It grabs your attention, it gets you invested in the characters and you are generally intrigued by the murder angle.
Especially as new material starts to come in that both clarifies and muddies the situation. You want to find out what's going to happen. At no point did they ever pull out the magic MacGuffin card or some sort of item that was previously unknown to the case that now fixes everything.
Heck the closest thing you could call to a MacGuffin would be the Indian black rock ring but that scene at the beginning of the film so it's already set up from the start.
There is this funny line at the beginning of the movie that talks about how the film was made on real New York streets and they didn't use any sets only actual environments of New York. Which is a nice idea and it be cool if they actually did that but you can tell they're using sets.
They have to be using sets you have to get the right lighting and God help you if you actually wanted to get sound off of your shot. You're not getting any of that from us New York Suburban Street. Or any other Street for that matter.
*I looked into it. Sure enough it's a real thing. It's a particularly dangerous move that can damage the neck and spinal cord of a person. Because you're literally just punching them in the back of the skull. It's prohibited by practically everybody. And I mean that makes sense. I mean the number one rule in most combat at least when it comes to formal is that you don't hit somebody when their backs turned from you.
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