An entertaining look at the FBI from its fledgling days, when 36 unarmed investigators constituted the "Bureau of Investigation" up till the days when FBI agents sought to prevent Soviet agents from gathering sensitive intelligence.
The FBI Story tracks the career of an FBI agent Chip Hardesty, who joins the Bureau in its early days. He expresses frustration with the ineffectiveness of the agency, but when J. Edgar becomes Director, he has a change of heart. (Surprise, surprise-- Edgar was actually in the movie, so I'm guessing that he had a part in Hardesty's position) Hardesty battles Klan members, gangsters, and Nazi influence in South America, as well as counter-intelligence efforts at the peak of his career as an FBI SAC (Special Agent In Charge) of the New York Field Office.
It's not a bad film, and there are some really classic quotes. There was this one about how sometimes with gangsters you just need a slide-fed, automatic machine gun. I enjoyed that one a lot. However, it did strike me very much as a propaganda film, being as though J. Edgar seems like a hero. The film even shows his personal arrest of a gangster making death threats.
The FBI Story tracks the career of an FBI agent Chip Hardesty, who joins the Bureau in its early days. He expresses frustration with the ineffectiveness of the agency, but when J. Edgar becomes Director, he has a change of heart. (Surprise, surprise-- Edgar was actually in the movie, so I'm guessing that he had a part in Hardesty's position) Hardesty battles Klan members, gangsters, and Nazi influence in South America, as well as counter-intelligence efforts at the peak of his career as an FBI SAC (Special Agent In Charge) of the New York Field Office.
It's not a bad film, and there are some really classic quotes. There was this one about how sometimes with gangsters you just need a slide-fed, automatic machine gun. I enjoyed that one a lot. However, it did strike me very much as a propaganda film, being as though J. Edgar seems like a hero. The film even shows his personal arrest of a gangster making death threats.