MOVIE OF THE DAY: WHITE HEAT

Great write up for one of my favorite movies. Cagney is every bit as brilliant as you say --it's one of the greatest over-the-top performances of all time (my OTT holy trilogy: Cagney in WHITE HEAT, Jack in THE SHINING, and Pacino in SCARFACE) Fever pitch perfect direction by Raul Walsh's (his greatest crime/gangster movie? I think so) And the big finale still works like gangbusters, more than deserving of the legendary status. Funny enough, if I recall correctly, Cagney wasn't too keen on returning to the gangster genre, and was down on the movie before and after making it, dismissing it as just a B movie. Maybe he's right, but oh, what a B movie!

I didn't know until this weekend that Cagney was 50 years old when he made it.  It's one of those movies I never did a lot of research on, but I thought of it as being his heyday rather than his comeback -- and you're right, Elvis, he was pretty "meh" about it. 

I think it's Walsh's best, but the guy made so damn many...I can't pretend to have seen them all. :P  What a career that guy had, and with an eyepatch to make it even more glamorous.