The Enforcer Blu-ray Review
Humphrey Bogart, Inc.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, May 9, 2013
Humphrey Bogart was at the end of his long and incredibly fruitful career at Warner Brothers when
The Enforcer
was released in 1951. Though Bogart had actually been a Fox contract player in the early to mid 1930s, it was his
Broadway success in Robert E. Sherwood's
The Petrified Forest which brought him to the attention of Warner
Brothers—though not necessarily in a good way. When Warner optioned the film rights to the play, they had absolutely
no interest in casting Bogart in the role which had brought him the most acclaim he had ever received in his already
lengthy acting career. Star Leslie Howard (
Gone with the Wind) allegedly contacted Jack Warner himself and said if Bogart wasn't given
the role, Howard would not be appearing in the film, either. Warner rather reluctantly gave in, and Bogart was a smash
(as was the film). One might assume this would automatically result in a "happy ending" of huge long term contracts
and piles of money being showered on Bogart, but quite the opposite was the case. Perhaps due to having
considerable egg on their corporate faces, Warner only offered Bogart a six month contract, which was a traditional
opening gambit for new actors who hadn't yet proven themselves, and by some reports at a rate considerably less than
what he had made at Fox years earlier. Warner was of course known for its crime melodramas, and Bogart was
immediately stuffed into one gangster role after another, with very little variety, something that chafed on the actor's
more noble (and ambitious) dreams. Warner in fact seemed to be the most provocative studio at the height of the
studio system in terms of demanding obedience from its players, something that resulted in a number of high profile
lawsuits through the years. Finally over the course of 1941 to 1942, Bogart was able to break free of the studio
imposed constraints under which he had been laboring, catapulting to leading man status with several classic films
including
The Maltese Falcon
and
Casablanca. Bogart became
one of a very few actors who was able to matriculate from playing supporting roles (usually if not always villainous at
that) into more traditional leading roles, many with a romantic element for which Bogart's hard scrabble persona might
not seem particularly well suited. There's no real romantic angle in
The Enforcer, an interesting fact based
drama that seeks to recreate the famous "Murder, Inc." inquisitions which attempted to bring down organized crime
networks, but Bogart is fully on display as a hero in the film, the last he would make which would be released under the
Warner Brothers banner.
The Enforcer plays out in a series of interlocking flashbacks that give the film a rather interesting and unusually
complex structure, especially for the early fifties. We initially get a framing device where a low level criminal named Joe
Rico (Ted de Corsia) has been taken into custody with the intent to have him provide testimony to bring down a major
crime lord named Mendoza (Everett Sloane). Mendoza has already tried several times to have Rico killed, and Rico is a
bundle of nerves. He's delivered to the offices of Assistant District Attorney Martin Ferguson (Humphrey Bogart), who is
having none of Rico's vacillation about testifying. Ferguson tells the panicked man in no uncertain terms that there's
enough on
Rico to put him away for life, and the only thing keeping him out of prison is his testimony against
Mendoza. After yet another attempt on his life, Rico attempts to get the hell out of dodge (and/or Ferguson's office),
leading to disastrous results—for Rico (who's dead) and Ferguson (whose case against Mendoza is now shot since Rico
was the only potential witness Ferguson was able to convince, even potentially, to testify).
With only seven hours until the court proceedings convene, at which point Mendoza's attorney will move for a dismissal,
Ferguson, who has a sneaking suspicion he's overlooked some salient piece of evidence, goes back to the evidence
room with a police captain (Roy Roberts) to review the entire case. And so we start to get the back story, which
becomes rather insanely convoluted within moments. The case began with the arrival of a stunned young man to a
precinct house announcing that "they" made him kill his girl. The police initially think the guy is off his rocker, but once
they find a grave (without a body), they follow up with the guy, only to find he's committed suicide in his jail cell. As
they start to investigate some of the nicknames of the men the guy had said had forced him to kill his girl, they start to
realize there is an organized criminal element at work. They also start to realize that someone else realizes what is
going on, for potential corroborating witnesses (not to mention criminals) keep ending up dead.
The Enforcer is a fascinating little time capsule, for as Ferguson and his cohorts begin to uncover a trail which
does in fact ultimately come up with a dead girl, they are "introduced" to verbiage with which they were previously
unfamiliar, words like "hit" and "contract". These terms have become such a part of modern day parlance that it's
almost shocking to see a film where the cops are wondering what the bad guys are talking about. There's a rather
labyrinthine number of clues that the police follow but the entire case ends up hinging on an ostensibly minor statement
that one character makes, a statement that suddenly rings a bell in Ferguson's mind and allows the case to come to a
violent, though pretty conclusive, finale.
The film moves along at a relatively breakneck pace, well directed by Broadway regular Bretaigne Windust and an
uncredited Raoul Walsh who took over for Windust after Windust became seriously ill. Bogart does a good job as a
harried seeker of justice. It's an interesting role for Bogie, as he's not a tough guy in any real sense of the word, and is
instead a concerned civil servant attempting to make sure a notorious villain is locked up for keeps. The supporting
cast, which includes a glut of great performers like King Donovan, Zero Mostel and future Roger Corman
Wasp
Woman star Susan Cabot (uncredited), is excellent as well.
