Sam Fuller's love letter to American journalism, the right to a free press, and the need to defend that right. I'm all for it, but the story was too canned and heavy-handed for me, and I wish it had had a larger dose of actual investigative journalism, or some nuance. There is quite a bit of talk about the duty of the press to be ethical (e.g. "The press is good or evil according to the character of those who direct it"), a lot of lionizing references to the great newspapermen of the past (Ben Franklin, Horace Greeley, et al), and some interesting bits about the mechanics of printing a newspaper in the 1880's, but the main plot line that has one editor (Gene Evans) trying to raise funds for the base of the Statue of Liberty and the other (Mary Welch) trying to run him out of business doesn't completely hit the mark for why a free press is so important, and it was more melodramatic than interesting. Put another way, it felt very "rah rah" about America and its journalism, but there wasn't a lot of substance to it. The interaction with this rival editor and the eventual resolution of her character were also pretty weak.
Review of Park Row
