Search - The Enforcer on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Questionable for Children Movie Release: 1951 DVD Release: 12/16/2003 Format: DVD - Black and White - Closed Captioned Audio Tracks: English Subtitles: English SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 27 mins Studio: Republic Pictures Members Wishing: 6 Genres: Drama, Crime Drama, Gangster Film

Humphrey Bogart plays Martin Ferguson, a prosecutor about to put Albert Mendoza (Everett Sloane), the head of a murder-for-hire ring, on trial. But the night before the trial, his key witness, Joe Rico (Ted de Corsia), dies in a fall out of the window of the room in which he's been guarded, part of an abortive escape attempt to keep from testifying. His case in shambles, Ferguson and detective Captain Nelson (Roy Roberts) try to piece the entire four-year investigation back together from square one, trying to find something that might give them another way to prosecute Mendoza. The main body of the movie is told in flashback, starting when a small-time hood named Duke Malloy (Michael Tolan, then billed as Lawrence Tolan) walks into a police station to turn himself in for killing his girlfriend -- and says that someone made him kill her. He babbles to the bewildered detectives about "hits" and "contracts" and men nicknamed Philadelphia, Big Babe, and Smiley. The body isn't found, but they arrest Malloy, who hangs himself in his cell. That dead end leads, almost by accident, to Philadelphia Tom Zaca (Jack Lambert), an asylum inmate who has to be put under sedation at the mention of Malloy's name. They find another suspect's body burning in his building's incinerator, and then Big Babe Lazick (Zero Mostel), a two-bit hood, hiding in a church in mortal fear of his life. He begins weaving a tale of a murder-by-contract ring and its head operator, Joe Rico, of a murder contract that Duke Malloy never filled on a girl who had to change her name, of mistaken identity and the murder of the girl's cab-driver father, and the connection between that and a murder that they both witnessed eight years earlier. In the midst of all of those interlocking stories (spread across ten years), there's something Ferguson missed -- when he had Rico to testify -- that he has to sort out from the reams of testimony and evidence, and he has to figure it out before Mendoza does, or lose the last witness he has. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Humphrey Bogart - Martin Ferguson
Zero Mostel - Big Babe Lazich
Ted de Corsia - Joseph Rico
Everett Sloane - Albert Mendoza
Roy Roberts - Captain Frank Nelson

The Enforcer (1951) arrives on DVD looking better than it has in any home-viewing format in decades, courtesy of Artisan Entertainment and Republic Pictures. Edits that cut out some of the most violent shots have been corrected and restored, and the Robert Burks' dark, moody cinematography has been given its maximum impact, with every shot carefully transferred right down to the last frame. The audio is in good shape, as well, especially David Buttolph's appropriately grim-toned, action-filled score, which, at times, seems to anticipate the work he subsequently did on The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. The annotation is virtually non-existent, apart from a plot synopsis that fails to capture the ominous tone of the movie, and no reference is made to Raoul Walsh's uncredited contribution, directing all of the action and violent sequences. But the 87-minute film has been given a generous 18 chapters and one bonus feature, the original trailer, which assembles many of the most violent sequences from the film together with some hardboiled blurbs. As for the content, fans of Humphrey Bogart may find him playing a prosecutor a little strange -- something he hadn't done since his pre-starring days of the 1930s in such pictures as Marked Woman -- but he brings a lot of energy to the role, and it allows him to work within the confines of the modern police procedural story; The Enforcer, after all, owes more to Dragnet than it does to such earlier Bogart crime pictures as High Sierra or Dead Reckoning. The disc opens on a simple single-layer menu that's easy to maneuver. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide