The Reckoning (1932) review - A dusty, rushed pre-code relic

If you love dusty, fast-talking pre-code crime dramas that wrap up in under an hour, yeah, The Reckoning is a fun little relic. But if you hate scratchy audio and plots that move so fast they forget to explain why characters are suddenly best friends, you should probably skip this one. 🎬

The whole thing centers on James Murray, who plays a guy desperately wanting to go straight. There is this sad, heavy vibe to his performance that makes the movie feel a lot more real than it probably has any right to.

He and Sally Blane just want to open a quiet little shop and leave the underworld behind. But the local gang leader—played with some serious eyebrow-arching by Bryant Washburn—is absolutely not having it.

This isn't a witty, lighthearted romp like Twin Beds. It is a dirty, low-budget street level melodrama that feels like it was shot in about three days.

The editing is incredibly choppy. One minute they are talking in a dark room, and the next, bam, we're in a completely different location with zero transition.

I kept thinking about how some other early talkies, like Unaccustomed As We Are, had that clunky sound stage feeling. Here, they just try to run through the dialogue as fast as humanly possible to save on expensive film stock.

There is this one incredibly weird moment where a kid in the background just stares directly at the camera lens for a solid five seconds. Nobody corrected him! 🫵

They just kept the take, which makes you realize how rushed these cheap independent productions actually were back then. I honestly love small mistakes like that because they show the human seams of the project.

The bad guy's henchmen are also kind of hilarious. They look like they were recruited from a local bowling alley and told to "look mean" while wearing oversized suits.

One of them keeps adjusting his hat every time he has to say a line, like he's worried it's going to fall off and ruin his big moment. It completely distracts from the threat he is supposed to be posing.

The climax is supposed to be this tense, dramatic showdown in a dusty office. Instead, the gunfights look incredibly awkward because nobody seems to know exactly where to aim their props.

You can see the smoke puffing out, but the actors react about a second too late. It makes the whole sequence feel like a very bad school play.

Still, there is something so charming about how earnest the whole thing is. It doesn't try to be some grand masterpiece; it just wants to get to the point and get out.

If you have an hour to spare and want to see what a bargain-bin movie looked like when Herbert Hoover was president, give it a spin. Just don't expect high art.