“James Cagney’s portrayal of a bootlegging runt is truly electrifying (he’d made five films, but this one made him a star), and Jean Harlow makes the tartiest tart imaginable.”
A pair of young hoodlums, Tom Powers (James Cagney) and Matt Doyle (Eddie Woods), rise up from the poverty-stricken slums of Prohibition-era Chicago and through the ranks of the criminal underworld, picking up all the accoutrements of success along the way: custom-tailored tuxedoes, fancy cars, gorgeous girls, bigger guns, etc. With a screenplay based on an unpublished novel (Beer and Blood) by two former newspapermen (John Bright and Kubec Glasmon) who had witnessed some of Al Capone's murderous gang rivalries in Chicago first hand, director and World War I vet, Wellman, told producer Zanuck, "I'll bring you the toughest, most violent picture you ever did see". A pre-Code landmark.
