The Criminal Code

I was with this movie until the end. A hard look at the ironic effect the criminal justice system can have on men caught up in it through happenstance, it suddenly gives our characters an easy way out instead of taking the story to the darker places it probably needed to go. Up until those final minutes, Hawks’ The Criminal Code was a solidly told tale, but it simply cannot follow through on the promise of its first 90 minutes.

Walter Huston plays Mark Brady, the district attorney in an u...