TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Casey Duggan It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

mark.waltz As dashing as ever, Warren William is very amusing as the independent crime solver who makes a bet with police detectives that he will stay out of trouble for 24 hours. Fat chance of that happening, because like "Murder She Wrote", bad things always happen when he's around even if he isn't involved. This comic mystery gets off to a hilarious start when a black cat ends up wearing valuable pearls that are believed mistakenly by the very effeminate male jeweler to be stolen. This is what leads William to make the deal with detective Thurston Hall, and valet Eric Blore makes the same bet with the seriously idiotic detective Fred Kelsey. Intrigue on a train results in murder, bringing the foursome together for a mixture of comedy and crime.A fun B picture, this has everything that audiences clamored for in World War II. The villains are comparable to Nazi's, and William is the epitome of that no nonsense American who could use his wits to get out of jams and deal with ruthless criminals and nitwits like Kelsey who gets more laughs simply by being overly serious and thinking that he's the smartest guy in the room. June Storey plays a fictional movie star who maybe involved with the villains. Look for a young Lloyd Bridges as a train passenger.

classicsoncall I get a kick out of watching these detective films of the era, they can be very entertaining but at the same time, some of them are quite brainless. The picture here fits in both categories. This Lone Wolf entry is based on a bet Michael Lanyard (William Warren) makes with Police Inspector Crane (Thurston Hall) that he can stay out of trouble for twenty four hours. By almost anyone's estimation that should be a safe one, but since that's the premise, you just know something will have to happen to cause the Lone Wolf's plans to go awry.A neat surprise for movie fans in this picture is the presence of Lloyd Bridges in his first credited screen role, even if he does spend a fair amount of time under duress while bound and gagged. He's been kidnapped by agents who want to get their hands on a new set of engraving plates that are stored in a virtually foolproof safe wired to a poisonous gas mix which is released if the safe is tampered with.If only the bad guys had been thinking as clearly as Lanyard there wouldn't have been any need to go the full seventy four minutes of the picture. Recall how Lanyard got the combination to the safe? - he just went back and watched the newsreel! Why couldn't one of the criminal masterminds figure that out for themselves? Gee, I don't know, not a lot of thought was put into this.Nor was anyone paying attention in the editing room. When Johnny Baker was shown bound and gagged in the locked safe compartment with the Lone Wolf attempting to open it, he clearly got his hands free enough to reach up to his mouth to remove the gag placed in it, but after a cut away, he's shown again with his hands tied and immobile. Fortunately Lanyard figures out the combo in time to make the save on his own, otherwise he might have simply asked Johnny for it! Well, I don't want to be too critical. The story was well played with a lot of humor thrown in, and the opening scene was fairly creative. An inattentive jeweler places a pearl necklace aside carelessly and it falls directly onto the neck of a black cat that scurries away. The whole time he's outmaneuvering the Wolf, his assistant Jamison (Eric Blore) and the police, I thought someone for sure would have called for apprehension of the cat burglar.

Michael_Elliott The Lone Wolf Take a Chance (1941)** 1/2 (out of 4) Good entry in the Columbia series has Michael Lanyard (Warren William) arrested on murder charges but of course he's innocent and must prove it. With the help of an actress (June Storey) and his assistant Jamison (Eric Blore), The Lone Wolf gets mixed up with murderers and counterfeiters. THE LONE WOLF TAKES A CHANCE is certainly a step up from the previous installment and after an opening sequence full of laughs, the film quickly picks up speed as we're given a rather interesting murder and an even busier series of events trying to explain what happened. I'm going to spoil what happened but the murder of the cop comes in a pretty surprising way and it's quite effective in the way that Lanyard gets mixed up in the events. Yes, one could argue that it was done in an over-the-top and unbelievable way but at least it was an original one. The comedy moments early on are actually pretty funny and they don't hurt the film like in previous episodes. There's a hilarious opening bit where The Lone Wolf tries to capture a black cat that has some pearls around its neck and the entire sequence is well directed and put together. There's some even funnier bits towards the middle of the picture when The Lone Wolf is stuck in a basement with the Inspector. The mystery aspect of the film is handled pretty well but I must say that all of the events were pretty hard to believe. As normal, William offers up a very good performance as the title character but by this time he could play it in his sleep. I really enjoyed Storey as the female lead and the regular cast of characters (Blore, Thurston Hall) are in fine form as well. We also get a young Lloyd Bridges. Fans of "B" mysteries should get a kick out of this one. It's certainly not among the best but it is fast paced and contains some fun moments.

MartinHafer One of the biggest problems I have with most B-detective series films of the 1930s and 40s are how stupid the police are in the films. After a while it just seems a bit annoying that the police are stupider than tacos!! Because of this cliché, I was happy to see that not only were the police reasonably smart in this film, but the leading man (Warren William) was actually pretty stupid himself on occasion--particularly towards the beginning of the film. Early on, Michael Lanyard (William) is in his bathroom when a detective begins banging on his window from the outside--considering that Lanyard lives high up in a high-rise apartment building, this SHOULD have gotten Lanyard's attention! And, when the cop tries desperately to tell Lanyard that a man is being kidnapped in the adjoining apartment, Lanyard closes the window on the poor guy!!! Then, a shot naturally rings out and the cop falls to his death. People assume Lanyard is responsible--and in a way he really was! Now despite this brain aneurysm, Lanyard spends the rest of the film intelligently trying to solve the crime and he's very ably assisted by his valet, played by the wonderful Eric Blore. Blore was always excellent in the Lone Wolf films in which he appeared, but in this one he seems even funnier than usual AND actually proves to be pretty helpful--something B-detective sidekicks seldom are! By the way, the kidnap victim happens to be a very young Lloyd Bridges. He'd done a few other B-detective films, but only in tiny bit parts (such as a bus driver in a Boston Blackie film). Here, he gets a pretty good chance to act even though he is tied up most of the time!! The film has a good and complex plot that is relatively easy to follow, excellent acting and is just plain fun to watch. A very good example of the genre that would have merited an 8 if Lanyard hadn't been so gosh-darn stupid in the beginning!