Decoy: A Boat Trip That Forgets To Set Sail

Is it worth your time?

If you have a weird obsession with 1940s-style setups and don't mind a movie that feels like it’s trapped in a dusty suitcase, maybe. It’s for the folks who love black-and-white melodrama and people talking in rooms for hours. If you need pacing, modern editing, or anything resembling a pulse, you’ll probably be bored to tears within twenty minutes.

There’s this one scene where Delia is trying to act all mysterious and seductive near the railing of the ship. It feels like she’s reciting lines from a manual on how to be a femme fatale. The camera just sits there, watching her, and I found myself looking at the background textures of the deck instead of the drama.

Viktor is supposed to be this guy carrying priceless emeralds, but he plays it so stiff you’d think he was made of cardboard. It’s a classic setup, similar to the kind of stuff you see in The Truth About Husbands, but without the wit. Every time Sybil enters the frame, the movie wakes up a little bit, mostly because she looks like the only person who knows she’s in a movie.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Decoy (1934) through its definitive frames.

The whole jewel heist plot feels like an afterthought. You get these long stretches of people just standing in doorways, whispering about emeralds, and then—boom—an explosion. It happens so abruptly it’s almost funny. It’s like the director realized the audience was napping and decided to wake us up with a firecracker.

Honestly, the best part of Decoy is how genuinely unbothered the side characters seem to be about the looming crime. There's a guy in the background of the mess hall scene who is just eating his dinner, completely ignoring the fact that a major theft is being plotted three feet away. It’s a tiny detail, but it made me chuckle.

It doesn't have the grit of Wolves of the Street or the charm of a simple caper. It’s just... there. It exists. It takes itself way too seriously, especially for a plot that basically boils down to "girl tries to kiss guy for a necklace."

• The dialogue is stiff as a board.
• The explosion comes out of nowhere.
• The boat set looks like it’s made of painted plywood.
• Sybil is the only reason to keep watching past the halfway mark.

Sometimes you watch these older films and they feel timeless. This isn't one of them. It feels like a relic that belongs in a basement somewhere. 🤷‍♂️