The Midnight Patrol is exactly as frantic as you think it is

If you have seventy minutes and a weird craving for black-and-white newspaper offices, The Midnight Patrol is... fine. It is the kind of movie that feels like it was filmed in a basement between lunch and dinner. If you love classic grifters and fast-talking reporters, you’ll dig it. If you prefer movies that actually make sense, stay away.

The whole thing kicks off with a reporter making a bet he clearly shouldn't have. He promises to solve a murder in 24 hours. The editor just looks at him like he’s a bug on a windshield. The pacing here is wild. It goes from zero to sixty for no reason.

There is this one scene where a character is trying to get into a locked door and honestly, it takes forever. It feels like the director just forgot to yell cut. You can almost see the actor thinking, "Is this where I start sweating?" It's awkward, but I kind of loved it.

It’s nowhere near as clever as The Criminal Path, but it shares that same desperate energy. Everybody is always shouting. Everyone is always running down hallways that look suspiciously like the same hallway.

Small things I noticed:

• The lighting in the back office changes drastically between shots. It’s like the sun decided to jump around.
• Keep an eye on the guy in the background during the lobby scene. He’s clearly trying to hold back a laugh.
• The telephone cords in this movie are probably the real stars. They get tangled in everything.

It reminds me a bit of the frantic vibe in Who Hit Me?, though with significantly more fedoras and fewer jokes that land. You can tell the cast was trying their hardest to make the dialogue sound snappy. Sometimes it works! Mostly, they just sound like they’ve had way too much coffee.

The ending is a total shrug. It just stops. It doesn't really resolve the mystery so much as it just runs out of film stock. I don't know, maybe that’s the point? It’s a scrappy little mess. 🎞️