Review of The Shadow Strikes

This film is called "The Shadow Strikes", but there is hardly anything shadowy, or mysterious, or supernatural about the title figure as the calm, urbane Rod La Rocque portrays him; in fact, he looks and acts exactly like one more incarnation of the highly popular at the time Philo Vance (even if he does don a black cape at one point near the end). Taken on that level - a standard whodunit of the era, about the murder of a rich man just as he's about to change his will - the film is fairly enjoyable, although the resolution (employing one of the oldest cliches in the book) is awfully rushed. ** out of 4.