BEFORE: James Cagney carries over from "White Heat" - and I go further back into Cagney's career, and crime films in general.
THE PLOT: A young hoodlum rises up through the ranks of the Chicago underworld, even as a gangster's accidental death threatens to spark a bloody mob war.
AFTER: This film had a lot to do with cultivating Cagney's image as a bad-ass. We see him as Tom Powers, enjoying success as a lower-level delivery boy in a bootlegging operation during Prohibition, after an attempt at robbery goes wrong, and he gets double-crossed by another criminal (go figure...)
Meanwhile, his brother enlists in the Marines and fights in World War I, and when he returns, there's an interesting contrast drawn between the two - Tom points out that they both kill for a living, the only difference being that a soldier's killings are sanctioned by the government for the greater good, and the mobster's killings are for profit. But doesn't a soldier get paid too? We tend to not consider that as some kind of "blood money", but isn't the end result the same? What makes one brother's actions legal and the other one's criminal?
More evidence tonight that old films just aren't as well-made - a lot of the major plot points in this story take place off-screen. A major character dies in an accident, it's sort of the turning point of the film, and we don't see it happen - instead another character rushes into the room to tell Tom (and us) about it. General rule: Show, don't tell. And when a gang war breaks out, the news comes to us in one of those spinning newspaper headlines. While that's not the only way that this film chooses to tell a story (an exploding store gives us the same information visually that the headline did verbally), a shortcut is still a shortcut.
Like "The Big Heat" and "White Heat", this film is on that list of "1,001 Films To See Before You Die", but honestly, I'm having trouble figuring out why. I had trouble even finishing this one last night before falling asleep, forcing me to stay late at the office this afternoon to finish it. There just wasn't much here to interest me, the story just seemed very average. It perked up a little bit during the gang war, but having to wade through a man's entire criminal career just to get there seemed like a lot of effort for very little payout.
There's also a lot of violence toward women - I realize this was made during a different time, but slapping women around after sleeping with them is not OK. Nor is shoving a grapefruit into a woman's face just because she asks if you're getting tired of her. I realize that this could be filed under character exposition, but I still don't have to approve of it.
Also starring Jean Harlow, Edward Woods, Joan Blondell, Mae Clarke
RATING: 3 out of 10 kegs
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