It may have its place in film history as a proto-gangster film and I'm always interested in seeing von Sternberg's work, but this one just never grabbed me. The pace is slow, the story and its love triangles are uninteresting, and the morality elements are heavy-handed. The only point I perked up was when one character says he isn't interested in women, which I thought might be a nice early example of openness about homosexuality before Joseph Breen started enforcing the Production Code ... but then shortly afterwards, he was indeed interested in women. The film needed some kind of spark - more star power, a better story, more grit, more atmosphere, I don't know - but without those things, I just felt it was kind of blah. Not horrible, just mundane. Maybe I just wasn't in the right mood when I saw it and am being harsh, but I was glad when it ended, even at just 80 minutes.
Review of Underworld
