In Meet Boston Blackie (1941) we find the former safecracker (Chester Morris) accidentally entangled with murder on a cruise ship. Slipping off the ship, he trades barbs with Inspector Faraday, who is shadowing him in the belief Blackie pulled of another heist, nearly gets darted, punctured, sapped, and maritalized, but manages to pull the fat out of the fire before it’s entirely rendered.
And if you think my prose is a melange of cliches, of only light-hearted interest, consider that a reflection of the movie. These Boston Blackie movies do not examine profound themes, so they have to have really good plots, dialog, and characters. Sadly, this one doesn’t really meet the bar in any of those categories. The pacing tends to be static, the bad guys are cardboard and forgot to stand in line for their quotient of cleverness, and the cops are little better.
But for an evening of shared head cold, it was adequate. Don’t expect much, but you do get a giggle now and then.
