What could drive a loving father to kill his own son? The question is answered in Manuel Romero’s Fuera de la ley (US: Outside the Law), an Argentinian proto-noir that’s unusually bleak for 1937, even when compared to Hollywood’s pre-Code gangster films of the early 1930’s. José Gola plays Juan Robles, the nasty, selfish son just out of prison, where he read books about Al Capone, and Luis Arata plays his father Pedro, the kindhearted, upstanding police commissioner whose forgiveness of his son’s moral transgressions is stretched to the limit. When Juan’s sexual advances are rejected by Emilia (Irma Córdoba), the single mother who has been living with Juan’s parents, he gets back at her by recruiting his gangster friends to kidnap her little girl while she’s playing in a park; this leads to a fast-paced, even chaotic search effort and dramatic battle of wills between police and perpetrator, father and son. Romero lays the atmosphere on thick through chronically shadowy sets and a variety of inventive camera effects such as zigzag wipes, high angles, composite shots, and dramatic lighting, like when prison inmates are reduced to soulless shadows on a wall a la Plato’s cave. Inspired by an actual high society kidnapping, the film has much in common with 1932’s Scarface, including Gola’s resemblance to the earlier film’s star, Paul Muni.