Review of Dead End

This film is more of a stylized melodrama about wealth inequality on the whole, but the entire project is elevated by Humphrey Bogart’s bravura performance. He creates a tragically menacing figure as the character of Baby Face Martin, tragic in that you can see his rough childhood on his now menacing visage. On the run from the law and bitter from the wrongs that society has done to him, he feels a need to harden the boys around his old stomping grounds and becomes the corrupting influence that drives them to crime. All the while, his childhood friend Dave (Joel McCrea) tries to teach them to be kind, forgiving, pillars of the community to help unite the poor and the rich and forge a better life for all—though, Dave realizes, such bitterness is hard to quell.