Wednesday, August 27, 2008

White Heat

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Between this, The Godfather, and the arrival of season 5 of The Wire, this is turning into Gangster Week here or something.

This is a famous gangster film starring James Cagney, and I had seen two other movies by this director, Raoul Walsh: The Roaring Twenties and High Sierra. Those were both pretty decent old crime movies, but this one is a big step up. It's surprisingly cold blooded and reasonably exciting, with a good over-the-top performance by Cagney, showing the same kind of bluster that Pacino would go for years later in Scarface. I haven't been as into the gangster films as I have other noir-y movies of the era, but this was one of the better ones.

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