Sunday 9 May 2010

Mr. Moto's Community Chest

Mr. Moto Takes A Chance 1938 US
Directed by Norman Foster
20th Century Fox DVD Region 1

Well this could be one of my shortest blog posts ever.

For some reason Fox, in their infinite wisdom, have decided to put the third Moto film in their second box set... which is not yet in my possession. Therefore I have to skip straight to the third disc in box one, which is the fourth in the series.

Ok, It has to be said. In my humble opinion this fourth movie might have been better entitled Mr. Moto Drags On. This film is only 63 minutes long but for the first 50 of them time crawls by slowly. Everything about this movie is duller than last weeks razor blade and the only bright spot was when the token comic relief character pegged Peter Lorre as somebody Hollywood would cast as a murderer. And like the previous two Moto films I’ve seen, the central character does do his fair share of murders... this time stabbing two guys and strangling another.

Fortunately, the last ten minutes of this movie livens up. The lacklustre writing suddenly becomes sparkling and witty for the final tommy gun battle in a temple in Angkor Wat. As brilliant as the last ten minutes are, however, it can’t save this movie from being the worst of the Mr. Moto films I’ve seen so far.

Maybe I’ve been spoilt from watching too much Charlie Chan.

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