The Enforcer Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

The Enforcer Blu-ray Movie Review

Humphrey Bogart, Inc.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 9, 2013

Humphrey Bogart was at the end of his long and incredibly fruitful career at Warner Brothers when The Enforcer was released in 1951. Though Bogart had actually been a Fox contract player in the early to mid 1930s, it was his Broadway success in Robert E. Sherwood’s The Petrified Forest which brought him to the attention of Warner Brothers—though not necessarily in a good way. When Warner optioned the film rights to the play, they had absolutely no interest in casting Bogart in the role which had brought him the most acclaim he had ever received in his already lengthy acting career. Star Leslie Howard (Gone with the Wind) allegedly contacted Jack Warner himself and said if Bogart wasn’t given the role, Howard would not be appearing in the film, either. Warner rather reluctantly gave in, and Bogart was a smash (as was the film). One might assume this would automatically result in a “happy ending” of huge long term contracts and piles of money being showered on Bogart, but quite the opposite was the case. Perhaps due to having considerable egg on their corporate faces, Warner only offered Bogart a six month contract, which was a traditional opening gambit for new actors who hadn’t yet proven themselves, and by some reports at a rate considerably less than what he had made at Fox years earlier. Warner was of course known for its crime melodramas, and Bogart was immediately stuffed into one gangster role after another, with very little variety, something that chafed on the actor’s more noble (and ambitious) dreams. Warner in fact seemed to be the most provocative studio at the height of the studio system in terms of demanding obedience from its players, something that resulted in a number of high profile lawsuits through the years. Finally over the course of 1941 to 1942, Bogart was able to break free of the studio imposed constraints under which he had been laboring, catapulting to leading man status with several classic films including The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. Bogart became one of a very few actors who was able to matriculate from playing supporting roles (usually if not always villainous at that) into more traditional leading roles, many with a romantic element for which Bogart’s hard scrabble persona might not seem particularly well suited. There’s no real romantic angle in The Enforcer, an interesting fact based drama that seeks to recreate the famous “Murder, Inc.” inquisitions which attempted to bring down organized crime networks, but Bogart is fully on display as a hero in the film, the last he would make which would be released under the Warner Brothers banner.

The Enforcer plays out in a series of interlocking flashbacks that give the film a rather interesting and unusually complex structure, especially for the early fifties. We initially get a framing device where a low level criminal named Joe Rico (Ted de Corsia) has been taken into custody with the intent to have him provide testimony to bring down a major crime lord named Mendoza (Everett Sloane). Mendoza has already tried several times to have Rico killed, and Rico is a bundle of nerves. He’s delivered to the offices of Assistant District Attorney Martin Ferguson (Humphrey Bogart), who is having none of Rico’s vacillation about testifying. Ferguson tells the panicked man in no uncertain terms that there’s enough on Rico to put him away for life, and the only thing keeping him out of prison is his testimony against Mendoza. After yet another attempt on his life, Rico attempts to get the hell out of dodge (and/or Ferguson’s office), leading to disastrous results—for Rico (who’s dead) and Ferguson (whose case against Mendoza is now shot since Rico was the only potential witness Ferguson was able to convince, even potentially, to testify).

With only seven hours until the court proceedings convene, at which point Mendoza’s attorney will move for a dismissal, Ferguson, who has a sneaking suspicion he’s overlooked some salient piece of evidence, goes back to the evidence room with a police captain (Roy Roberts) to review the entire case. And so we start to get the back story, which becomes rather insanely convoluted within moments. The case began with the arrival of a stunned young man to a precinct house announcing that “they” made him kill his girl. The police initially think the guy is off his rocker, but once they find a grave (without a body), they follow up with the guy, only to find he’s committed suicide in his jail cell. As they start to investigate some of the nicknames of the men the guy had said had forced him to kill his girl, they start to realize there is an organized criminal element at work. They also start to realize that someone else realizes what is going on, for potential corroborating witnesses (not to mention criminals) keep ending up dead.

The Enforcer is a fascinating little time capsule, for as Ferguson and his cohorts begin to uncover a trail which does in fact ultimately come up with a dead girl, they are “introduced” to verbiage with which they were previously unfamiliar, words like “hit” and “contract”. These terms have become such a part of modern day parlance that it’s almost shocking to see a film where the cops are wondering what the bad guys are talking about. There’s a rather labyrinthine number of clues that the police follow but the entire case ends up hinging on an ostensibly minor statement that one character makes, a statement that suddenly rings a bell in Ferguson’s mind and allows the case to come to a violent, though pretty conclusive, finale.

The film moves along at a relatively breakneck pace, well directed by Broadway regular Bretaigne Windust and an uncredited Raoul Walsh who took over for Windust after Windust became seriously ill. Bogart does a good job as a harried seeker of justice. It’s an interesting role for Bogie, as he’s not a tough guy in any real sense of the word, and is instead a concerned civil servant attempting to make sure a notorious villain is locked up for keeps. The supporting cast, which includes a glut of great performers like King Donovan, Zero Mostel and future Roger Corman Wasp Woman star Susan Cabot (uncredited), is excellent as well.

The Enforcer Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Enforcer is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.37:1. This is one of the nicer looking catalog releases we've seen lately from Olive, with excellent contrast and an overall nicely detailed image. Robert Burks' shadow drenched cinematography is well rendered here, with appealingly dark blacks and well modulated gray scale. Close-ups reveal very good fine object detail. As is typical with these older releases that have not undergone any digital tweaking or scrubbing, there are occasional very minor issues, in this case mostly limited to a few specks and flecks that show up from time to time.

The Enforcer Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Enforcer's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track suffices quite well for what is in essence a dialogue driven feature. When the film does have some amped up sonic effects, including things like Rico's perilous fall to his death or, later, a shootout, the track performs reasonably well given appropriate expectations. Things still have a slightly boxy sound, but the midrange is surprisingly full. There's no real damage to report here. Fidelity is very good, though dynamic range is fairly limited.

The Enforcer Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No supplements are offered on this Blu-ray disc.

The Enforcer Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Humphrey Bogart's swan song with Warner Brothers is a really interesting film. If Martin Rackin's screenplay is a little too convoluted for its own good, it's fascinating to see a procedural like this one, especially since it so clearly presages current day efforts like Dick Wolf's Law and Order franchise (and how many Law and Order episodes can you count where the cops are trying to keep a nervous witness safe and then have to deal with unexpected consequences?). The film moves along without pausing to really dwell on things like character all that much, but when you have the good guys and bad guys so clearly delineated, that's not as fatal an error as it might seem at first blush. This Olive release looks rather good and sounds fine. Recommended.