“The Big Shot was the first of some 30 films made over a 20 year period by a generally routine director, Ralph Murphy, who seldom rose above the programmer level.... I suspect that it--like Bachelor Bait--will prove to be one of those genuine surprises that cropped up at RKO when one least expected them. It has an interesting cast, but in 1931 must have been a curiously anachronistic film, since it seems exactly like one of the Charles Ray vehicles of 1916-20.... In the lead, Eddie Quillan has more life and enterprise than Ray had, and the film bowls along surprisingly briskly (especially for a '31 RKO) with quite a lot of comic action. Its climax is surprisingly suspenseful and exciting, if unsubtly old-fashioned. It's a pity that, like so many commercially unimportant early RKO's it has been ‘preserved' only via a lacklustre 16mm negative, and in this print the values of Arthur Miller's undoubtedly fine photography are minimized. Otherwise, however, it's quite one of the best of the early Eddie Quillan vehicles.” William K. Everson