Amazon.com Essentials:
This superb 1949 crime drama takes elements of plot, character, and
theme
familiar from '30s melodramas and orchestrates them as an existential
tragedy noir. James Cagney, in a towering performance, is Cody
Jarrett, a transparently psychotic robber with a molten temper, feral
cunning, and mercurial charm that are finely calibrated extensions of the
doomed gangsters he played a decade before, this time coiled not around a
Depression-era impetus of greed or class rivalry, but an Oedipal bond.
Cody's beloved, calculating "Ma" (Margaret Wycherly) is the compass for his
every move, her iron will and long shadow acknowledged not only by Cody but by
his gang, his bored, restless wife (Virginia Mayo, radiating sensuality and
guile), and the undercover cop (Edmond O'Brien) planted in Jarrett's
path.
Director Raoul Walsh propels the story from a rolling start, a tautly paced
train robbery that goes awry, culminating in the leader's capture. An
ambitious henchman (Steve Cochran) plots a behind-bars hit foiled by
O'Brien, who's infiltrated the prison to befriend Jarrett, a goal handily
accomplished with the rescue. Jarrett's paranoia, murderous anger, and
longing for his mother are interwoven with intermittent, incapacitating
headaches that underline and amplify his core of inner rage; Cagney makes
these seizures harrowing, revealing purely animal pain and terror at once
frightening and pathetic.
Jarrett's escape, the gang's reunion with fellow escapee O'Brien aboard,
trusted by Jarrett but not his partners, and the big score that unravels in
a climactic gun battle in an oil refinery are conducted with a gritty
economy, and Walsh and his cast evoke a criminal life devoid of glamour,
noteworthy for the undercurrents of distrust that keep tempers flaring.
The final showdown, and Jarrett's crazed, taunting battle cry in the face
of death ("Top of the world, Ma!"), achieve a sense of tragic inevitability
that deservedly make this a defining moment in Cagney's screen career.
--Sam Sutherland
