Parole! is a strange, breathless piece of 30s crime pulp

Is this thing worth a watch?

If you have a soft spot for pre-code era grit and plots that move at a pace that feels like someone is chasing you, you’ll probably have a good time. If you need everything to be grounded in reality, well, the politician who makes decisions based on astrology might just drive you up the wall. 📉

Honestly, the whole movie feels like it was written in a fever dream. It jumps from a prison stabbing to a high-stakes political drama so fast you’ll get whiplash. But that’s kind of the charm, right?

Some notes from the couch

The pacing is absolutely unhinged. One minute we’re talking about the moral weight of the parole system, and the next we’re watching a guy try to smuggle a criminal out of the country in a coffin. It doesn’t pretend to be a serious legal drama, even though it tries to lecture us a bit at the end.

Anthony Quinn is in this, and he’s clearly having a blast being the heavy. He brings this frantic, sweaty energy to every scene he’s in. You can almost feel him trying to steal the spotlight from the guys who are supposed to be the heroes.

• The scene where they use a fainting mother to scam a release? Classic.
• Why does the bad guy love horoscopes so much? It’s never explained, and I kind of love that.
• The dialogue is sharp enough to cut glass, even when it makes zero sense.

There’s a strange sincerity to the way these movies tackle social issues. It reminds me a bit of the frantic moralizing you see in A House Divided, but with more fedoras and Tommy guns. It’s not trying to be a deep study of the human condition. It’s just trying to keep you awake for 70 minutes.

The ending is a total mess, but in the best way. I think my favorite detail is the sheer audacity of the mortuary hideout. It’s like the screenwriter just threw a dart at a list of 'creepy places' and went with it. 💀

Is it perfect? Hardly. The characters make decisions that would get them killed in about five seconds in real life. But you don't watch this for the realism. You watch it to see how they’re going to get out of this latest scrape, and if the politician gets his comeuppance. Spoiler: he does, and it’s gloriously ridiculous.

It’s a scrappy little film. It feels like it was put together with whatever was lying around the studio lot, and honestly, that’s exactly what I want from a Saturday afternoon watch. Don't overthink it.