IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020702/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 5,6
Directors: Andrew Bennison, John Ford
Main Cast: Edmund Lowe, Catherine Dale Owen, Frank Albertson, Marguerite Churchill, William Harrigan, Lee Tracy, Ilka Chase
"Born Reckless is a comic look, at a man who is at the fringes of gangdom. The film dances around the edges of the 'gangster picture' as a genre, without ever becoming a full-fledged gangster movie. The film is almost as much of a burlesque of the gangster genre, as Ford's next film Up the River will be of the prison movie.
Based on a true story, this drama profiles the experiences of a young gangster. After getting caught during a robbery, the gangster is given a choice: he can either go to prison or join the military. He chooses the military. However, when he returns home, he returns to gangster life. So the hero starts out as a crook: a member of a gang that commits burglaries. While technically thus a 'gangster', he never becomes a big time criminal, and never becomes involved in bootlegging or other typical activities of Al Capone era gangdom. And he keeps trying to get out of this world, during most of the picture.
Neither Born Reckless nor Ford approve of gangsters. Unlike most 'real' gangster movies, Born Reckless does not idolize or glorify gangsters. Instead, it views them in a negative and satirical light. Born Reckless is based on the novel Louis Beretti (1929) by Donald Henderson Clarke. By 1929, gang tales were popular in stage and prose fiction, as well as movies.
In his long career John Ford shared directorial credit in two other films, Mister Roberts and Young Cassidy. Both were considerably better than Born reckless. Andrew Bennison who was mostly a screenwriter was the co-director, presumably to help Ford over the bumps of the new sound media."
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