(3 of 3)
Vice Squad (Levy and Gardner; United Artists) introduces the stream-of-consciousness technique at the precinct level. What James Joyce did in Ulysses for Leopold Bloom, this picture does for a detective captain. And though a day in the life of a flatfoot does not exactly provide many Joycean transfigurations—especially when the flatfoot is Edward G. Robinson —the film does leave the audience feeling like a thoroughly chewed cigar.
Detective Robinson's day begins with the bad news that a patrolman has been shot the night before while trying to stop a car heist. Then a stool pigeon tells him that a well-known hood is back in town to pull a bank job. Piece by piece, evidence comes in to connect the hood with the heist. By 9 a.m. the bank in question is staked out with plain clothesmen. At 1 p.m. the visiting hood and his gang strike, as expected. After a savage gun battle, two thugs get away—without the loot. By 5 p.m. the captain has cracked two witnesses and, on their information, caught the rest of the gang on the getaway. He thereupon calmly goes home to supper.
In its main movement, the picture has all the drive of a .45 slug, but the comic interludes are mostly misfires. Paulette Goddard is agreeably bummy as an affluent madam, and Porter Hall, as one of the witnesses (an undertaker on a spree), firmly supports many a shaky scene with his main comic device: an almost completely absent chin. Edward G. Robinson is as monotonous and entertaining as ever. An actor who has developed well-nigh infinite modulations of the sneer, Robinson, after 30 years of practice, has at last produced his masterpiece. In Vice Squad, he displays a sneer so spectacular that he can almost be said to smile.
* Cinemogul Darryl Zanuck signed an affidavit solemnly affirming that the voice on the sound track was really Marilyn's.