Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27346 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-01-25
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 78 minutes

Customer Reviews

One of Cagney's best
James Cagney was one of America's greatest actors, and this film is one of his best, building up to a climax which is unforgettable. I watched it on TV nearly three decades ago and this DVD edition brought it back, just as powerfully. A morality tale for the 1930s, it is still watchable today.
Highly recommended.

five star classic!
i adore this film.it is without a doubt my favourite cagney movie ever.. James Cagney portrays his character in a way that always wants me to feel sorry for him. Rocky Sullivan may well be one of his most famous roles and you only have to watch this to see why. i have never ever seen an actor playing a gangster with such class as i have seen with cagney. i find him brilliant and unmatched even today in the world of a-list millionaire celebrities.i always reach for this film if i wake up around four thirty on a saturday morning and find i can't sleep, and after watching it i feel i can face the day fully. you will understand when you watch the film and maybe you too will fall in love with James Cagney just like me.

Not without flaws, but the high points are very high
This bears the hallmarks of quite a lavish Warner Bros. production - in some of the scenes the extras are numbered in their hundreds, and there is somewhat more location shooting than the norm for the day - and the combination of a fine director (Michael Curtiz) and the sensational James Cagney can hardly go wrong.

It marries two film genres, the gangster movie and the social comment picture, and does it pretty well, though at times a touch of sentimentality, mostly to do with the priest (Pat O'Brien) detracts from the tough gangster element; I believe that films about boyhood pals who take a different turning in life were popular in the Thirties.

The film falls into three sections which to my mind succeed in varyinbg degrees. The opening section dealing with Rocky's adolescence and early criminal career are solidly scripted and played, but I felt that the succeeding section as Rocky emerges from prison and attempts to reassert himself was a little limp in comparison. The scenes involving Humphry Bogart and his associates fail to rise above standard cops-and-robbers fare, and the Dead End Kids were probably much more to the taste of thirties than contemporary audiences; their scenes in their Fagin-like dugout and the gym drag somewhat.

But then the film suddenly moves into top gear in the final third; it becomes taut, gripping and brilliantly directed in the grand Film Noir tradition. The shoot-out is violent but balletic as Cagney swoops from room to room and roof to roof, an angel of death, and filmed in great contrasts of light and shade. The culminating famous final moments are powerful and touching, and devoid of sentimentality.

Curtiz handles the crowd scenes throughout with wonderful skill. Ann Sheridan as Cagney's girl is convincingly acerbic but affectionate. Pat O'Brien as the priest is the weak link; here the script lacks bite, but even though O'Brien has the misfortunate to be paired with the electric Cagney in most of his scenes, he still lacks impact. Of Cagney what can one say, other than that for sheer burning energy, even when doing nothing, he stands apart from all but a handful of actors? I see that Orson Welles said of Cagney that he "was maybe the greatest actor to ever appear in front of a camera".