This is not one of Warner Brothers' finest films, as the writing is pretty silly at times and terribly predictable. For example, when the character "Pop" appeared, I said to my daughter that that old guy would have to die in the film--and about 20 minutes later, sure enough, he had assumed room temperature! In fact, throughout the film, the action was pretty ordinary and often telegraphed. Despite starring Edward G. Robinson, Marlene Dietrich and George Raft, the film had a definite "B-movie" feel to it due to the shallow plot and rather one-dimensional characters. This one-dimensionality was especially true with Robinson, as he was amazingly pugnacious and impossible to believe throughout.
Now despite all this and the overall ordinary nature of the film, it still is rather entertaining and worth a look if there is nothing better on television. Not a great film but a decent time-passer.
By the way, a few years earlier, Warner Brothers made a somewhat similar film called SLIM. While MANPOWER is not exactly a re-make, they both have a lot of similarities and involve death and danger on the power lines.
