The Falcon in Mexico

The Falcon films, both with George Sanders and Tom Conway in the lead role, are on the most part very enjoyable. There are some very good ones like the first two Sanders Falcon films and 'The Falcon Strikes Back', though also a few disappointments like 'The Falcon in Danger'.

While it's watchable enough, 'The Falcon in Mexico' is one of the series' weaker films. It has good things certainly, but too much is lacking too. The photography is slick and atmospheric, and Mexico looks stunningly exotic here. There is some playfulness in the script, while the mystery does start off quite well.

Salvaging it the most is the cast. Conway continues to thrive and enjoys himself evidently, everything that Sanders brought to the role Conway also brings and just as effectively. A charming Martha Vickers and a very funny and full of life Nestor Paiva are the supporting cast's standouts, Fernando Alvarado is also appealing.

However, the story does suffer from a lack of suspense, erratic pacing (tries to be bright and breezy, which it is sporadically, but is too hectic more like), a very vague and weird motive for the criminal, not being focused on enough with Mexico being favoured over it and a very abrupt ending. The stock Mexican music sounds cheap, not like the Falcon series at all, and the musical interludes were unnecessary and irrelevant to the story, also placed at inappropriate times.

The travelogue stuff is striking but doesn't add a lot and slows down the film. William Berke's direction is undistinguished, and too much of the script is awkward and confused.

On the whole, an uninspired entry in a mostly enjoyable series that suffers from too much Mexico and not enough Falcon mystery. 5/10 Bethany Cox

This "Falcon" entry relocates to Mexico and features all the stock characters and situations that one would expect from Hollywood in that setting - some of which (the repeated footage of songs in the cantina, for instance) is obviously used simply as filler. But what raises the resulting film somewhat above average is the unexpected twist it manages to place on much of its material. Barbara's exotic young stepmother turns out to be genuinely attached to her, for instance, while the grinning, thick-witted Mexican who seems to be playing a part in a bad film turns out to be a very cool bird indeed.

There is some artful photography and some smart dialogue, and while there does seem to be a certain amount of tourist advertising blatantly inserted -- literally, as in photographs of travel brochures -- this film is more interesting than I thought it was going to be. Oddly enough, while it features a number of murders they are all left more or less in the background to the main mystery, which is the question of who faked the stolen portrait... or indeed, if it was faked at all...

"The Falcon in Mexico" is a 1944 entry into "The Falcon" series, by now starring Tom Conway. In this story, Tom Lawrence (The Falcon) is in Mexico investigating the possibility that a dead artist might not be so dead after all, after he sees the model for one of the artist's portraits. The artist has been dead 15 years, but if that's the case, this woman has discovered the secret of eternal youth - until she winds up dead. Did I mention the portrait looks like a paint by numbers? Martha Vickers plays the artist's daughter, who keeps "seeing" her father. Mona Maris is her remarried stepmother who dances in a Mexican club with her new husband.

The movie is okay, with an abrupt ending, which isn't unusual in these films, and the movie seems like an ad for visiting Mexico. Supposedly some of the footage is from the Orson Welles' debacle "It's All True." If so, I'm glad RKO found good use for it.

So is artist Wade alive or not. His daughter seems to think so even though he's supposedly ensconced in a crypt in Mexico. Fear not, however, the Falcon (Conway) is on the case. Actually the ingredients of a good mystery are present but the script mixes them up in a sloppy fashion. Much of the problem, as other reviewers note, is the big travelogue part, which only gets out of Hollywood proper thanks to some artistic Orson Welles stock footage. Otherwise it's process shots and RKO's backlot, along with that all-purpose ethnic Nestor Paiva (Manuel) furnishing a dollop of comic relief. Then too, the musical interludes tend to interrupt at inconvenient times. (Still, I really like the enchanting two little girl singers Hunter & Alvarez.)

What's worth watching for the guys, at least, are the gals, especially Vickers who's downright beautiful, at least in my book. I could have used a couple dozen more close-ups. Too bad the director treats her so casually. Anyway, the smooth-as-silk Conway is on hand to lend this slapdash programmer some class. But he really was better off with the great Val Lewton and his classic horror fests than he is here.

Something happened to the Falcon on his flight down to Mexico. He was never the same after he landed.

For the first 15 minutes or so of this movie -- set in a large U.S. city -- everything is terrific. The Falcon meets two beautiful women, commits two minor crimes, finds a corpse, gets wrongly accused of murder, escapes from custody and learns that something mysterious is going on south of the border. It doesn't all happen in exactly that order, but there's plenty of fast-paced fun.

But once the Falcon and one of the women fly to Mexico, the excitement levels off. The plot slows to a crawl. Events, including murders, seem almost random, and even the characters appear bored at time. At one point, the Falcon warns a Mexican gentleman that somebody may try to kill his daughter. The man shrugs off the tip and assures our hero that Mexico is a very safe place. He's not even curious about where the threat comes from!

The problem with the main part of this movie is that there's so much Mexico, there's no room left for mystery. There's travelogue-style footage of lakes and mountains, and some of it is very good. There are songs in Spanish, performances of masked Mexican dancers and shots of Mexican fishermen at work. There are even stereotypical "comic" Mexicans who talk like Speedy Gonzales. But there's no suspense, and the ending is very weak.

Considering when it was made, "The Falcon in Mexico" probably had a public relations component. During World War II, the U.S. government encouraged Hollywood to portray Latin America in a favorable light. But in a mystery movie, an exotic setting goes only so far. After a crackerjack start, this little whodunit is ultimately unsatisfying. It's at its weakest where it should have been strongest.