"Up For Murder" is a tame but fairly interesting pre-code picture from Universal. Its main value is for its acting performances, especially Genevieve Tobin, society page editor for a big-city newspaper, and Lew Ayres, a mail room go-fer who gets promoted to cub writer. It's all as the reviewers above describe it, with Tobin as a woman of the world and Ayres as an infatuated youth. Purnell Pratt is the paper's publisher and Frank McHugh is a writer/drunkard, a part which becomes tiresome midway through.
At a shade over an hour the picture is not burdensome but is not as tense and suspenseful as its title sounds. The storyline itself is straightforward but the ending is contrived and somewhat fatuous; murder in any form is normally pretty serious business. I almost fell off my seat watching the happy ending, as the story to that point was dramatic and true to life, and it brought my rating down a peg or two.
Capitolfest, Rome, NY, 8/16.