This film is amazing. This is the transition point into compelling narrative storytelling with sleek productions, camera movements, tracking shots but meaningful socially relevant and explosive commentary films that will burst onto the scene in the 1950’s. This film is a glimpse of the power of social realist cinema with an all star production and cast. In my opinion that is the pinnacle of cinema in history.
The storyline is taut detailing a rise and fall of a group of gangsters who all meet their various ends. James Cagney is the redemptive figure who is forced to die cowardly in order to send a message to the kids who admired his criminal behavior that crime doesn't pay. That scene of him breaking down while going to the death penalty is so hard-hitting because it is a rebuke to his earlier films Public Enemy and such that glamorize inadvertently a life of crime. This film states clearly that Hollywood has a moral obligation to push children off the path of criminality by showing the criminal as cowardly and weak at the end of the story and not a martyr who burns out in flames of glory. That is the ending of a social realist film.
This movie has an all star cast with a thrilling through line. James Cagney is incredible as always and highly nuanced in his ending scene of casting off the tough guy look for the sake of the kids. Humphrey Bogart plays an incredible two-faced villain. He's honestly better in a way as the backstabber than he is as the hero. Bogart's unique voice lends itself to a criminal and a liar rather than a hero. It's interesting how he ended up getting leading man roles with that voice.
The film is also shot in a very interesting way mixing classic staging and blocking and clear mediums and close ups with tracking shots like the one at the end showing him going up to the electric chair that keep you moving and on your feet as a viewer. The film is dynamic, and bold and entertaining and socially redeeming. In a way this movie redeems the previous gangster films of the 1930's by sending the message to Hollywood, "Hey we have a responsibility to the children of tomorrow not to glamorize these guys. And it's not the moral censors telling us to say that but it's actually a recognition on our part that we can end up idolizing these criminals through our artistic medium even if that is not our intent."