AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Abbigail Bush what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

classicsoncall Well here's a John Wayne film you probably never heard of and it actually turned out fairly entertaining in my estimation. For old time movie fans there are a wealth of references to other pictures but you have to be paying attention. My summary quote was spoken by the picture's understated heavy Tom Cameron (Edward Ellis), and it immediately brought to mind the 1936 film "Bullets or Ballots" starring Edward G. Robinson with an assist from Humphrey Bogart. Cameron's right hand man, portrayed by Ward Bond, seemed to be modeled on Lon Chaney's Lennie character in "Of Mice and Men", another film preceding this one by a couple of years. I was a little baffled by that in as much as Cameron seemed to be running a pretty tight political machine and Floyd the Spider (Bond) seemed like a loose cannon most of the time.There was another cool scene right after Lynn Hollister's (Wayne) impromptu radio pitch for the Cameron political organization which he did with feigned sincerity. Outside the station, a waiting doorman proclaimed to Hollister and Sabra Cameron (Frances Dee) that "It was pretty good, but I still prefer Gene Autry". Autry was going great guns for Republic Pictures at the time, so it made a lot of sense for them to plug one of their main stars. Interestingly, while Wayne's character manhandled his female co-star by placing a checkered tablecloth over her head and popping her over his shoulder, Autry put a leading lady over his knee for a spanking in at least a couple of his Westerns.Another reason I can chalk up for enjoying this picture had to do with the place names. There really is a Spring Valley located about thirty miles north of New York City, that being Hollister's home town. Not far from Tarrytown actually, mentioned by Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront", a place he didn't like because the crickets made him nervous. Both locations today are a far cry from being small country towns, much like Newburgh, where the editor of The Globe was about ready to retire to and grow the biggest asters. Newburgh was actually named America's best small town in 1960, but you wouldn't know that today either.Played with about equal parts drama and light humor, I see the movie doesn't resonate a whole lot with other viewers here so I guess I'm a little outside the mainstream on this one. But like I say, it was some of the little things that kept me focused on the story besides the main idea of election tampering that eventually brought down the corrupt politicians with Hollister's help and Boss Cameron's sudden change of heart and mind.

mark.waltz Small town attorney John Wayne arrives in a very corrupt big city to find out the truth about the alleged suicide of a local college basketball hero. The dead kid, shot through the lungs right before being struck by lightening, apparently was going to blow the ruthless gambling house "The Inferno" ("Beware all who enter here!" a sign warns) and tie in a local political bigwig up with the mob. This Capra-esque drama with a ton of comic overtones is pretty impressive "A" stuff for Republic, and pairs Wayne with the lovely Frances Dee who gets an entrance usually saved for big MGM stars like Hepburn and Garbo.The Inferno set is like something out of a carnival fun-house and features most of their staff dressed as the devil, including the chorus girls. An election day fight turns comical with Wayne trying to tame the feisty Dee but suddenly turns tragic. It is pretty obvious from the get- go who the bad guys are, but Edward Ellis, as the political boss (and Dee's father) is given many dimensions, making him much like Claude Rains' senator in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington". To give one of the "heavies" a name like "T. Amato" indicates the mood of the script which never gets its bearings to really make you take the film seriously. One of Wayne's first non-action/westerns (and set in the present day), this shows him in the same light as James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Fred MacMurray, Gary Cooper and yes, even Ronald Reagen as the simpleton fighting for truth, justice and the American way. The film both benefits and suffers from its comic elements, a plus for the prissy butler Barnett Parker, a definite minus for the brute who lusts for Dee in a seemingly light-hearted manner which turns treacherous, and stunned silence for the slapstick manner of the fight.

James Hitchcock Lynn Hollister, a small-town lawyer, travels to the nearby big city on business connected with the death of his friend Johnny. (Yes, Lynn is a man despite the feminine-sounding Christian name. Were the scriptwriters trying to make a snide reference to the fact that John Wayne's birth name was "Marion"?) Hollister at first believes Johnny's death to have been an accident, but soon realises that Johnny was murdered. Further investigations reveal a web of corruption, criminality and election rigging connected to Boss Cameron, the leading light in city 's political machine.That sounds like the plot of a gritty crime thriller, possibly made in the film noir style which was starting to become popular in 1941. It isn't. "A Man Betrayed", despite its theme, is more like a light romantic comedy than a crime drama. Hollister falls in love with Cameron's attractive daughter Sabra, and the film then concentrates as much on their resulting romance as on the suspense elements.This film might just have worked if it had been made as a straightforward serious drama. One reviewer states that John Wayne is not at all believable as a lawyer, but he couldn't play a cowboy in every movie, and a tough crusading lawyer taking on the forces of organised crime would probably have been well within his compass. Where I do agree with that reviewer is when he says that Wayne was no Cary Grant impersonator. Romantic comedy just wasn't up his street. One of the weaknesses of the studio system is that actors could be required to play any part their bosses demanded of them, regardless of whether it was up their street or not, and as Wayne was one of the few major stars working for Republic Pictures they doubtless wanted to get as much mileage out of him as they could.That said, not even Cary Grant himself could have made "A Man Betrayed" work as a comedy. That's not a reflection on his comic talents; it's a reflection on the total lack of amusing material in this film. I doubt if anyone, no matter how well developed their sense of humour might be, could find anything to laugh at in it. The film's light-hearted tone doesn't make it a successful comedy; it just prevents it from being taken seriously as anything else. This is one of those films that are neither fish nor flesh nor fowl nor good red herring. 3/10

bob the moo In New York, a small-town basketball player stumbles out of kingpin Cameron's club, Inferno, gets struck by lightening and dies. Investigation reveals he was shot but the papers are put under pressure to report it as a suicide. Lawyer Lynn Hollister arrives the next day from Spring Valley to investigate the death, firm in his belief that his friend would not have taken his own life.From the plot summary, this film sounded like Wayne would be in a tough-talking crime thriller where he uncovers a political web of corruption. However, despite the dramatic (rather supernatural) opening, for over an hour it simply isn't that at all. It actually seems to aim for some sort of light comedy where Lynn is very much the small-town hick who greets everything with a smile and an `ahh-schucks'. This is not a bad thing but it doesn't really sit with the dramatic intensions.After an hour, Lynn turns on those he has been feeling out for a while, but even then it keeps the gently comic tone in spits and spats. However the arrival of tough talking (even with comic interludes) is welcome and it helps the film a great deal in the final 30 minutes. The lack of tension and excitement is not so much due to the comic stuff as it is to the lack of a really tight, coherent script. The film is about the powerful Cameron who has his hands everywhere - controlling the media and the politicians just enough to put the squeeze on them. However the film doesn't deliver this well enough and I was left unconvinced by the size of the web - and therefore rather uninvolved in the whole film.Wayne is OK at the comic stuff and the tough talking stuff but it's like he's flicking a switch in this film - tough one minute, completely different the next; it spoils his character a bit. Why his character is called Lynn is beyond me as I've never heard it for a boy before - although Wayne's no stranger to unusual names. Dee is dark and sexy in a good role, but she isn't given enough time. Ellis is OK but fails to come across as the master that the plot requires him to be. A small role for noir favourite Ward Bond adds to the interest.Overall this is an OK film but it's mix of comedy and drama just doesn't work and it gives the film an uneven feel. It turns it around a bit in the final 25 minutes but by then it is too late to build tension. The power of Cameron never really comes through and, for the majority of the film, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a whimsical romantic comedy rather than a murder mystery film.