This is about 10 years older than the oldest film I had previously ever seen. So I don't know if it's a matter of digital remastering or if it's just the way movies were at the time but you can certainly tell the difference between picture and sound quality of the late 20s versus the late 30s. That being said I have read that this was either the first or one of the first gangster movies ever made. It took a while for me to figure out who the characters were simply because it was difficult to understand both sound wise and picture wise. But after I did figure it out it was not a bad film. The plot was a bit simplistic but if it was the first one ever groundbreaking for its time. Additionally I remember watching scenes of Elmer Fudd shooting bugs bunny and bugs bunny dying very slowly then coming back to life and saying different things like "say goodbye to the boys" "Say goodbye to my wife" while somebody hold him in their arms. I'm certain those Bugs Bunny scenes had to have been based on this or movies like this because that was exactly one of those scenes when the undercover cop was killed. Interesting to see the origins of that... but overall this movie is very similar to reading classic literature. In the fact that if you want to be sarcastic about it it's very easy to make fun of, but if you want to watch it legitimately I'd appreciate it for its time and the fact that it was the original or one of the originals of an entire genre then it's actually pretty great. On the political side of things it is also interesting to show please corruption not only existed but was understood by Hollywood all the way back in the 1920s. Shown by several scenes in the movie and one were one of the main good guys attempts to blackmail a criminal into a confession by threatening to murder him if he did not confess, and using a police gun to show it was self-defense. So politically goes to show things really haven't changed over the past century here in America at least not from Hollywood's perspective but also very interesting sentiment was the movie that was released in 1929.
Review of Alibi
