And in the mid 30s, studios turned stars who had played charismatic gangsters into cops. James Cagney plays a young lawyer who becomes a government agent who predictably ends up battling the thugs he grew up with on the Lower East Side. Despite the simple plot and political impetus, 'G' Men is a good film. The photography is beautiful and scenes are well staged as in the shot below where Ann Dvorak catches sight of a kidnap victim. The cast has great character actors like Robert Armstrong as thin lipped, squinty eyed hard-ass who hates all the new recruits including Cagney. Although crafted to conform to Joe Breen's vision of a cleaned up Hollywood, 'G' Men is packed with violence. The final sequence, taken from John Dillinger's real life shoot-out at a Wisconsin hunting lodge (and echoed beautifully in 2009's Public Enemies), would give Sam Peckinpah a run for his money.
There was only one scene that approached pandering, and that was one in which the Department of Justice begs a group of anonymous lawmakers for weapons. "The Department of Justice is handicapped," says the mandarin, "When Hugh Farrell died in that slaughter, he didn't even have a gun to defend himself. A federal agent is not permitted to have a gun. Gentlemen! Give us national laws with teeth in them... and these gangs will be wiped out!" While I'm not saying that national forces don't need weapons --I did think it was a little too simple of a line drawn from A to B!
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