Call Northside 777

Two men, Frank Wiecek and Sam Faxon, are sentenced to 99 years in jail for killing a cop during Prohibition. 11 years later, a personal ad appears in the paper, offering $5,000 to anyone with information about the killing.

Jimmy Stewart plays a reporter assigned to investigate the personal ad, and finds that the story makes for some good columns. The longer things go, the more he becomes convinced Wiecek is actually innocent, and then he's beyond simply writing stories about people who also believe that, and into pursuing leads to prove it.

One interesting thing to me is that the warden of the prison seems fully on Wiecek's side, at least to the point he agrees to let Stewart interview the man, agrees to let them give Wiecek a lie detector test if Wiecek agrees*.

This puts the warden in sharp contrast to most all other authority figures in the justice business. The police become actively hostile towards the reporter, going so far as to pull relevant records from the files to try and prevent Stewart from seeing them, even though he has every right to see them. The Police Commissioner, Attorney General, and even the Governor's office bring pressure on the newspaper, because they claim this is slandering 'the finest police force in the country', and that even if there was a mistake, that was under a different political regime**. They're more concerned with not looking bad for being wrong, than looking bad for putting an innocent man in prison for a decade and counting.

Not so different from today, then.

So another movie about the value of the press, and how the American justice system isn't so bad, since it will occasionally, under great duress, admit its mistakes. There's a two sentence voiceover narration at the very end which is unnecessary and too preachy for a movie that already treads close to that territory. Should have just left it out and let Wiecek's dialogue be the last word.

One other thing that bothers me is Faxon also protests his innocence the few times we get to see him, but no one goes to bat for him. Not even Wiecek. I don't know if we're meant to assume he is guilty - although the warden says all the other convicts are convinced Wiecek and Faxon are truly innocent - or just ignore the fact his justice gets lost in the shuffle.

* There's a brief scene the night after Wiecek agrees where his cellmate tells him this is a terrible idea because that's what got him in there.

** They actually describe themselves as a regime twice, which I thought was reserved for dictatorships and military juntas.