This is typical of the social dramas, or hollywood gangster films of the thirties, except its protagonist is a newsman, who gets no thanks for being a good reporter, (he gets beat up, and his bosses refuse to foot the hospital bills) and thus decides to be a finger pointer for the mob, while being fed stories by one mob to knock off the operations of its rival mobs. Certain scenes are overplayed and dreary while others are quiet with a lot of pathos to it. The once great star of silent cinema, Richard Barthelmess, was not great at delivering dialogue and is much the same here. But you've got Gable playing a gangster and a last fifteen minutes where given no dialogue, Bartelmess gets to shine and show us the actor he was. Overall, a good gangster flick dealing with the stories of the time that the press had been infiltrated by the mob to withhold harmful stories against them. It also was a hit, if that's a plus.
Review of The Finger Points
