Big Pal (1925) User Reviews

The Last Collaboration Between William Russell And Jules Furthman

[boblipton · 5/10 · 24 February 2023]

William Russell is a prizefighter with a manager for a brother, a mother in a wheelchair, and Mickey Bennett for an admiring son or nephew. Julanne Johnson has a low opinion of fisticuffs until he saves her from her runaway horse. He's scheduled to meet Frank Hagney for a chance to fight the champion; but Hagney's team gets hold of young Bennett and tells Russell that unless he throws the fight, the kid gets it.

It's the last of 28 movies that Jules Furthman wrote for Russell, and it's a minor one. Russell's star was in the decline and he would die in 1929 at the age of 44, while Furthman would live a long time and help write such classics as MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY and TO HAVE AND TO HAVE NOT. At 44 minutes, this is not a major movie, even if John Adolfi directed it, and Alison Skipworth shows up briefly as a social worker.

Very good boxing thriller!

[JohnHowardReid · 8/10 · 4 October 2014]

This movie doesn't have a great deal in common with either Jules Furthman's original screenplay or the movie's official synopsis provided by the movie's star and its producer, William Russell. According to Furthman, his screenplay started off when Judge Truscott's daughter, Helen, spurned society life for work in the settlement districts where she is saved from a runaway horse by a professional boxer, played here by the movie's producer, Russell. There is none of this stuff in the movie at all. Instead, it starts off highlighting the juveniles and their "pretend" boxing matches led by Mickey Bennett. Mickey falls into the hands of a gang of crooks who let it be known they will release Mickey unharmed if Russell takes a dive in the fifth round of the boxing championship. I won't tell you how it all works out, but I think you can guess the rest. The movie was skillfully directed by John G. Adolfi, who has done a very admirable job as usual. Best of all, the fighters seem to be doing their own fighting. In fact all the boxing scenes seem most realistic. A much under-rated director by critics – though significantly NOT amongst his peers – Adolfi was handsome enough to be a movie star himself. Jack L. Warner regarded Adolfi as the most skillful and most helpful director on the lot and he would have continued to receive plum assignments had he not died of a cerebral hemorrhage while on location at Canoe River in British Columbia for background scenes in Voltaire (1933). Available (minus credits and end titles) on a very good Alpha DVD.