13 Rue Madeleine

The story might have been more engaging if it weren't done documentary style. Small things, such as the French and German characters speaking with the appropriate accents, would have improved the films quality.

I do however like the fact that there are no cheesy romantic subplots. It is also nice to see the Axis powers (in this case the Germans) being portrayed as competent individuals, rather than buffoons as so many other movies of the era do.

Ultimately, this movie is a must addition to my collection because of my love of Cagney. Originally, I had only seen the final scene of this movie when it was on AMC. I will not give it away, but I was so engaged by Cagney's laugh and the look on his face given the circumstances in the last minute of the film, I bought the film. If you're a Cagney fan, I don't think you'll be dissapointed. His performance is quite good. If you're not, then I think I'd skip this one.

From there, the film jumps to graduation day and Cagney has determined who the spy is and is told to send this spy on a mission intended to decoy the Germans from the true date and location of the impending invasion of Europe. Things go wrong on this mission from the start and Cagney has to go in to clean up the mess.

The acting is only 'OK' by all but the mayor of a small French town and American actors play the German officers. They even speak English when speaking amongst themselves. While having 'Germans' speaking English detracts from the film, at least they spared us and didn't try to fake German accents. Furthermore, the Germans are depicted as being competent with their duties instead of bumbling idiots. For these reasons, the film rates two stars instead of only one.

However, this story missed out on so many chances to be a lot better. The spy is discovered from the start of the film and there are no tense moments at all. They could have written the film so that it appeared this one person was the spy but still left the possibility open for it to be somebody else. Furthermore, there are no tense moments in this film at all. There's no suspense and there's no action. It's just a bunch of actors going about living their lives.

Even when the German intellegence agents are onto what's going on the movie just jumps right to the plot point. There's a scene where the Germans are using radio direction finding equipment to triangulate the position of a British agent's broadcast and they find the agent within 10 seconds of the opening of the scene. Again, a lot of cat-and-mouse scenes could have been written into this story but as it is it's too flat - too linear. There's no drama, no suspense, and very little action. Not much to see here.