'G' Men

William Keighley
1935

A solid Warner Bros crime flick that uses the founding of the FBI as an excuse for James Cagney to mug tough and pop off pistol rounds. Sweetened with an "I don't like you, and you don't like me" interdepartmental rivalry between Cagney and his boss, thick plumes of gunsmoke, and plenty of nefarious gangsters. "G Men" doesn't have the memorable scripting of "White Heat" (1949), or the iconic American gangster narrative of "The Public Enemy" (1931), but manages to satisfy through base masculinity and effective thrills. Most interesting is the inclusion of a wealthy reformed gangster, who had acted as Cagney's mentor and benefactor. While this one-time hoodlum gets his in the end per the era's karmic dictates, it's interesting to see a genuinely sympathetic character who was at one time on the other side of the law - unusual for a period when most screen villains were presented as nihilistic monsters or charismatic psychopaths.