The story of this film depicts a new crime by a mentally criminal, Cody Jarrett, after leaving the prison; he plans to a great theft but he doesn't know that his partners seeks to get rid of him especially the man, who think that he is the right hand of him.
Raoul Walsh's Freudian film is one of the fastest and toughest crime-gangster films ever made, boasting a bravura performance from James Cagney as a misogynist mama boy ("top of the world, Ma").
Cagney, intenso como de hábito, cria um personagem que, apesar de sua óbvia instabilidade psicológica e de sua crueldade patológica, conquista o espectador com sua carência emocional.
Time Out
January 26, 2006
Despite chronology (deranged by the censor's influence on the studios), this is really the fitting climax of the '30s gangster movie.
Its archetypal influence on later films like Goodfellas and the Al Pacino Scarface is striking, even if we can never again experience how new and bold it was back in its day....
Brilliantly directed by Raoul Walsh, an old master of cinema hoodlumism, it returns a more subtle James Cagney to the kind of thug role that made him famous.
