To be honest, I picked out this movie at Blockbuster tonight because it shares its title with an album by Tricky. (More accurately, the film lent its title to the album, but that’s neither here nor there.) The image of James Cagney on the box cover was an immediate turn-on. The fact that it’s a gangster flick, particularly a ‘30s gangster flick, sealed the deal.
I believe this is the first James Cagney movie I’ve ever seen in full. Much of the film was like remembering a dream. The character of James Cagney (not Rocky Sullivan, his role, but James Cagney) is one that is embedded in our common American psyche. From his wide flat face and slightly exaggerated good posture to the nasal twang of his voice and dated vernacular like “whadaya see? whadaya hear?”, and “in a pig’s eye!”, James Cagney, the man, has been caricatured countless times. He is an American archetype, a persona I know from the Muppet Show, and Sesame Street, from Saturday Night Live, and un-attributed, nudge-nudge-you-know-who-I’m-doing impersonations on late night talk shows.
The film itself is a wonderful testament to the fame and allure of The Gangster. Rocky Sullivan, after being released from jail, returns home where he finds a boyhood brother-in-arms (now a priest), a girl he used to flirt with, and a group of teenage fledgling wise guys. He and the priest become fraternally, diametrically opposed. He gets the girl, Ann Sheridan. The pubescent gang falls in love with him. With his courage. With his money. With his power. With his gangsterdom. This idolatry is the most interesting point of the film coming down to a tantalizing, ambiguous finale.
Only adding to the pleasure that this movie brings are Humphrey Bogart
as one of Cagney’s associates, a John Candy look-alike as one of
Bogart’s middlemen, and two child actors who are the spitting image
of young James Cagney and young Ann Sheridan.