The film recorded a loss of $14,645. and "inconsequential" with "shoddy writing and generally uninspired performances." Writing for
The Spectator in 1936,
Graham Greene gave the film a positive review, characterizing it as "a fast well-directed and quite unsentimental gangster film, pleasantly free from emotion". More recent writers have been kinder to the film. Grant biographer
Scott Eyman called it an "unheralded gem in Grant's catalogue, a snappy comedy-drama [...] a cheerfully disreputable
pre-Code film unaccountably made after the Code, with speedy cross-talk that prefigures
His Girl Friday." Writing for
The New Yorker,
Richard Brody hailed the film's "cocksure grifters and workaday wiseacres who dish out sharp-edged patter—none more than Grant and Bennett, whose gibing often resembles quasi-
Beckettian doubletalk. Here, Grant offers early flashes of the brash, suave, and intricate antics on which his enduring comedic persona is based." ==References==