Wild Company

For most of the first half of Leo McCarey's "Wild Company", I felt like it wasn't going anywhere, with a spoiled rich youth (Frank Albertson, better known as the banker who loans Marion the money in "Psycho") getting involved with a nightclub singer at a place frequented by gangsters.

The second half proves intense, after a big pivot. It keeps you on the edge of your seat...until the end. The judge's speech might have seemed serious in 1930, but nowadays it looks silly at best (and possibly bigoted). People always say those sorts of things about the youth. As to the issue of coddling them too much, that could be a case of affluenza, as seen in the case of the boy in Texas whose lawyer argued that his privileged upbringing deprived him of a sense of right and wrong, and he got off with a slap on the wrist.

Anyway, an okay movie, nothing great. Watch for a pre-fame Bela Lugosi as the club owner.