George Raft, Dorothy Hart, Paul Stewart, John Hoyt, Helen Westcott
Lou Donelli (Paul Stewart) never fully trusts factory worker Joe Gargan (George Raft).
Joe soon finds himself on the defensive.
The dreary existence of factory workers in cramped apartments with ugly wallpaper serves as the backdrop for Seymour Friedman’s Loan Shark, which opens in traditional noir fashion with a frightened man being chased through the night and pummeled in an alley. George Raft, whose mechanical acting often feels oddly comforting, plays ex-con Joe Gargan whom police ask to go undercover as a tire factory employee to infiltrate a gang of loan sharks preying on employees; Joe resists the assignment until his indebted brother-in-law Paul (Henry Slate) is murdered by the sharks. While “undercover,” Joe’s rough and tumble attitude appeals to boss Lou Donelli (Paul Stewart), who offers him a job on the inside. The story’s fairly straightforward, but the pace is fast and the action sequences (some of the best fistfights in noir) are well-executed, especially the final shootout in a theater. One character ends up, for all intents and purposes, ironed to death.
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