Beware of Blondes (1928) - A clunky but charming boat trip

If you are the kind of person who gets nervous when a stranger asks you to watch their bag at the airport, you will probably find Matt Moore’s performance in Beware of Blondes painfully relatable. It is a silent film from 1928 that doesn't really know if it wants to be a heist thriller or a comedy of errors, so it just kind of sits in the middle, looking worried. It is worth a watch if you have a soft spot for the 'man out of his depth' trope, but if you are looking for the tight suspense of something like the 1922 Sherlock Holmes, this isn't that.

The setup is pure pulp. Jeffrey (Matt Moore) works at a jewelry store, stops a robbery, and gets a 'reward' that is actually just more work: take this giant emerald to Honolulu. The boss calls it a vacation, but it is really just a high-stress courier job. Moore spends the first ten minutes looking like he is about to have a heart attack. He has this way of clutching his briefcase that makes you want to reach into the screen and tell him to breathe.

Once he gets on the boat, the movie starts playing the 'which blonde is the thief?' game. Dorothy Revier shows up as Mary, and the movie spends a lot of time on close-ups of her looking mysterious. There is a specific shot where she is leaning against the railing, and the lighting is doing a lot of work to make her look like a femme fatale, but she also just looks like she is trying to remember where she left her luggage. It’s a strange, lingering shot that goes on just long enough to make you wonder if the camera operator fell asleep.

The editing gets a little choppy during the dinner scenes. There is a moment where a character reaches for a glass, and in the next cut, their hand is back on the table. It is the kind of thing you only notice because the pacing slows down so much during the mid-section of the voyage. You can feel the movie stretching the travel scenes. There are a few too many shots of the ship's bow cutting through water. We get it, they are on a boat.

Hazel Howell plays the actual 'Blonde Mary,' and when she finally shows up, the contrast between her and Revier is supposed to be the big hook. But honestly, the movie is more interested in Matt Moore’s sweating than the actual mystery. It lacks the sophisticated character work you see in something like A Woman of the World. Here, the characters are mostly there to move the emerald from point A to point B.

There is a weird bit with Roy D'Arcy, who always looks like he is about to twirl a mustache even when he doesn't have one. His eyes are constantly darting around. It is very 'silent movie acting' in a way that feels a bit dated even for 1928. It contrasts weirdly with Dorothy Revier, who feels much more natural and modern in her movements. She has this way of reacting to Jeffrey's paranoia with a slight, tired smile that feels like it belongs in a much later film.

The costumes are great, though. Very 1920s travel chic. Dorothy Revier wears this one hat that looks like a structural engineering project. I spent about five minutes just wondering how it stayed on her head during the windy deck scenes. It is those little details—the texture of the heavy coats, the way the emerald looks like a giant piece of green glass—that keep it interesting when the plot starts to drag. There's a scene in a cabin that feels incredibly cramped, almost claustrophobic, which actually helps the tension more than the script does.

By the time they get to Hawaii, the tension has kind of evaporated because you have likely figured out the 'twist' thirty minutes ago. The ending feels rushed, like they realized they were running out of film and needed to wrap it up before the boat docked. It is not a bad way to spend an hour, but it is the kind of movie you forget about two days later, except maybe for the memory of Matt Moore looking like he's about to jump overboard out of sheer anxiety.