The Four Just Men (1939 film)

Plot

The Four Men are British World War I veterans who unite to work in secret against enemies of the country. They aren't above a spot of murder or sabotage to achieve their ends, but they consider themselves true patriots.

Critical reception

The New York Times wrote, "Four Just Men, by Edgar Wallace, whatever it might have been, was probably not a work of literature, and therefore, on that charitable assumption, it is gently, rather than harshly, that one must deal with the British-made screen version, now on view at the Globe Theatre. Like all pictures seeping over from England nowadays, it is more than a little infected with the virus propagandistus, but, over and above that common-carrier failing, it is a model of sheer incredibility crossed with what (carrying out the charity idea) we might designate as espionage melodrama" ; while the Radio Times wrote, "produced by Michael Balcon at Ealing, it defiantly suggests that Britain could never fall under the sway of a dictator. But in all other respects it's a rollicking boys' own adventure, with some of the most fiendishly comic-book murders you will ever see... hugely entertaining sub-Hitchcockian antics."