A curious hybrid of genres (war movie, crime gang melodrama, romance, James Bondian adventure), The Blue Eagle is a rough-and-ready concoction with some charm and a great deal of Fordian roughhousing. Handsome leading man George O’Brien, often seen stripped to the waist with muscles glowing, carries the brunt of the brawling but takes time to romance sweet Irish lass Rose Kelly (Janet Gaynor). This pre-Sunrise teaming of O’Brien and Gaynor is lightweight by comparison but showcases their abundant popular appeal. The plot about two rival gangleaders (William Russell is O’Brien’s antagonist) duking it out over Rose on a World War I U.S. Navy ship and back home on the New York waterfront unexpectedly turns into an outlandish yarn about drugrunning. The crooks operate out of a submarine stashed away in an island cove. Ford’s direction of the action sequences is mostly routine, though an earlier naval battle is unfortunately among the parts missing from this reconstructed version of the film, which also suffers from considerable nitrate decay. Ford’s nephew Phillip Ford, son of Francis Ford and later a director himself, plays O’Brien’s drug-addicted brother, Limpy. Robert Edeson as the parish priest and navy chaplain who referees the gang battles while trying to bring peace to the waterfront is an early example of the Fordian militant cleric.