Director John Farrow was always at his best when dealing with desperate men in desperate situations. One of Farrow's lesser but still fascinating 1930s assignments was the Warner Bros. actioner Men in Exile, starring Dick Purcell as American fugitive from justice Jimmy Carmody. Escaping across the Mexican border, Jimmy becomes inexorably involved in a noisy South American revolution, only with several other shifty-looking expatriates. For the sake of heroine Sally Haines (June Travis), Jimmy cleans up his act long enough to do the right thing at the right time. The "John Farrow touch" is especially evident during a tense climactic scene in which it appears that one of the protagonists is about to be executed by firing squad.