Certain actors, like James Cagney, tended to be typecast as a specific character archetype no matter how varied their filmography was. People always remember him as a tough guy gangster. While I haven't seen a ton of his movies, George Raft is mostly no different. In this film, the type of attitude his was known for doesn't really do him any favors, since he is playing a good guy for once and his acting just feels wooden. The story concerns itself with Johnny (George Raft), a merchant ship captain who discovers another ship out at sea one day, but it's completely abandoned. Searching the vessel, Johnny finds evidence that the captain of the missing crew was his deceased father. The ship is brought back to New Orleans, and Johnny tries to find out what happened to the sailors. He searches various nightclubs until he meets a woman named Paulette (Signe Hasso) who was spotted snooping away from the supposedly empty ship once it docked. Johnny also comes across a former lover of his, Lila (Claire Trevor), whose husband Gusty owns the shipping line that Johnny works for. Gusty is not exactly happily married and is not concerned with the death of Johnny's father. Retrieving the ship's cargo (gold reserves from ww2 era Free France) is his only concern. Although Lilah cheats on her husband by being with Johnny, she knows Johnny has ignored her until this whole ship thing happened, so she also starts going out with Sam Jewell, a cafe owner. Later on, Paulette gets shot at by some unknown assailant outside Sam's cafe, so a taxi driver named Celestial (Hoagy Carmichael) brings her to his relative's house as a safety measure. Johnny tells her he's on her side and only wants to know what happened to his father and the ship. It's revealed that she stowed away on the ship with Johnny's dad's permission, but the ship was raided by pirates who killed the crew and took the gold for themselves. However, the pirates were themselves killed when an unseen attacker got onboard and transferred ownership of the gold to himself. This person is responsible for killing Johnny's father, and although Paulette didn't see his face, he saw hers, which is why he's now hunting her down. Paulette is then found by two thugs and taken to the seaside house of Sam, who tries to kill her by shoving her off a balcony into the ocean, but she escapes. Johnny shows up, rescues Paulette, and then gets on a ship where he is visited by Lilah. She wants him to go with her to a secluded house, which she says contains the gold. Upon arriving, Johnny suspects a trap and draws a gun, thinking Sam is inside. Instead, the door opens to reveal a bloodied Gusty, brandishing a revolver of his own. Gusty tells Johnny he's the one who murdered his father, because Gusty has hated Johnny ever since boyhood for being strict when he was a sailor under Johnny's command. After stating that he lied to Johnny's father about what he was going to use the gold for, Johnny closes in on Gusty, intent on disarming him. Right when he's about to shoot, Gusty is shot dead by his own secretary, who basically runs the whole shipping line for him. Johnny goes back to Celestial's hideout, leaves Lilah behind and instead reunites with Paulette. While this movie has the visuals we typically associate with the noir genre, Raft's inability to show emotion kind of kills the experience. The reason he was popular in the first place is because he was stoic and not really phased by anything, making him an ideal choice for a coldblooded killer. He just doesn't fit this role very well. While Claire Trevor plays the usual noir female who manipulates men and turns them against each other, she's ironically helpful to Raft's ultimate goal, that is changing his mindset from finding the location of the gold to locating his father's killer. While Johnny Angel has a unique premise for a noir in that it focuses on sailors, the generic storyline of trying to find a stash of money, Raft's lack of distinguishing scenes, and the overall complexity of the plot bog it all down for me. I don't mean to be funny when I say it, but this is one time Raft couldn't save himself from sinking.
Review of Johnny Angel
