- Directed by Edwin L. Marin, Johnny Angel is a pretty standard potboiler in which the eponymous seafaring hero (George Raft) investigates the disappearance of his father (J. Farrell MacDonald), whose abandoned cargo ship was found adrift without a crew. As Johnny eventually discovers, a French woman named Paulette (Signe Hasso) witnessed his father's murder while she was conducting an investigation of her own into some stolen gold. High on the list of suspects is a local gangster named Jewell (Lowell Gilmore), although one might reasonably wonder why shipping company owner "Gusty" Gustafson (Marvin Miller) and his wife Lily (Claire Trevor) keep getting in Johnny's way.
- While Johnny himself is a relatively forgettable "leads with his chin" type, the other characters do a lot to help this film out. Paulette, for instance, is considerably more resourceful than the average film noir "woman in trouble," particularly when she cleverly evades the men who hijacked the ship. I am even more likely to remember Gustafson's strangely petulant man-child who manages to get shot by his own nanny (Margaret Wycherly) at the end of the film. And then there's the eccentric and seemingly omnipresent cab driver named Celestial O'Brien who is played by Hoagy Carmichael. So plenty of interesting little details in what is otherwise a very ordinary film.
