My Review of ‘Mr. Soft Touch’ (1949)

Published in

Movie Lover’s Club

3 min readDec 22, 2022

Hi, today I’m reviewing the movie Mr. Soft Touch.

This is very odd film noir. Yeah, I just hastily wrote some notes about it, so I will try to tell you my notes without reading them. Hopefully a little bit. I kind of think of this movie as a film noir slash screwball comedy. Maybe? Maybe not so much screwball as rom-com? Rom-com noir?

Okay. No, but there is a kind of feel of screwball to it, just a little bit cuz it’s an old movie, I guess, and it’s got this character, the main character is named Joe Miracle, and this is taking place at Christmas, so you can only just imagine.

He’s played by Glenn Ford, who is quite young and fitting for the role, and he comes home from the war and discovers that this nightclub he owns was taken over by thugs, the mob, whatever, and his brother is missing, presumed dead.

So he steals some money and he is on the run from said mob. So it’s basically like Midnight Run except it’s a film noir and it has this romantic thing. Yeah, he gets involved with Evelyn Keyes. It is Evelyn Keyes. Yes, Evelyn Keyes is working, she’s in charge at this homeless shelter I guess you could think of it as. It’s called a settlement house. I guess that’s a nice euphemism back then for homeless shelter.

“Admit it. You can’t resist me.” (Image via DVD Talk)

In any case, sparks fly quickly, et cetera, but not too quickly. I mean, it works up to it, I think, a little bit for an old movie and for a movie that’s short <laugh> by modern standards. So on that note, I will just say that I did enjoy this movie, even though it is not a typical film noir. It deserves a special category all of its own, but it is really the kind of film noir I imagined would be produced if Hallmark were to make a film noir.

How is that for a concept, Hallmark? Anybody who wants to write for Hallmark should see this movie <laugh> and think about that. Yes. Alrighty then. Talk to you later. Thanks.