Pat O'Brien used to be a top reporter, but he has taken to the bottle since his wife's death. He quarrels with his editor in the newsroom and is fired. He then discovers that his son has a rare deadly disease that only a specialist in Switzerland can cure for a thousand pounds. He goes to the editor's house to make peace and get an advance, but hears gunshot and sees some racketeers leave. O'Brien breaks in and finds the editor dying. He picks up the gun when he hears a noise, but it's Lois Maxwell, the editor's niece and a fellow reporter. The next morning, O'Brien goes to the gangster, George Coulouris, and offers to confess to th murder, to give him and his gunsels time to flee the country for the money he needs.
O'Brien is too old for the part, despite the pep and professionalism he puts into it. The rest of the cast behaves in unlikely ways, especially Lois Maxwell as the dead man's niece who finds O'Brien standing with a gun over her uncle and yet comes to believe he didn't do it. I was also unconvinced by the way O'Brien took out two young hoods in a fight. To add to the issues, Claude Kingston, who plays his son, is one of those nasal, high-voiced drips with a teddy bear that riles me up. They needed someone ten or fifteen years younger.... or to have put O'Brien in a toupee.
O'Brien is too old for the part, despite the pep and professionalism he puts into it. The rest of the cast behaves in unlikely ways, especially Lois Maxwell as the dead man's niece who finds O'Brien standing with a gun over her uncle and yet comes to believe he didn't do it. I was also unconvinced by the way O'Brien took out two young hoods in a fight. To add to the issues, Claude Kingston, who plays his son, is one of those nasal, high-voiced drips with a teddy bear that riles me up. They needed someone ten or fifteen years younger.... or to have put O'Brien in a toupee.