White Heat (1949)

Name: White Heat (1949)
Released: 1949-9-3
Cast: James Cagney, Virginia Mayo, Edmond O'Brien, Margaret Wycherly, Steve Cochran

White Heat (1949)

G
1h 53m
1949

97%

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Academy Award winner James Cagney delivers a tour-de-force performance as a murderously psychotic criminal mastermind with an overpowering mother complex in the crime thriller White Heat. While in prison, Cody Jarrett (Cagney) befriends an undercover cop (Edmond O'Brien) posing as a young thug--appearing to idolize the hard-bitten gangster who suffers from semi-epileptic seizures, outbursts of frightening violence and an almost incestuous attachment to his mother. Released from prison, Jarrett plots a seemingly perfect heist, unaware that his partners plan to kill him and his right-hand man is working for the police. Cornered, Jarrett chooses to go out in an explosive act of self-immolation rather than surrender in this classic of the gangster genre. Academy Award nomination for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story (Virginia Kellogg).

Director:

Raoul Walsh

Producer:

Louis F. Edelman

Writer:

Ivan Goff, Ben Roberts, Virginia Kellogg

Cast:

James Cagney, Virginia Mayo, Edmond O'Brien, Margaret Wycherly, Steve Cochran, John Archer, Wally Cassell, Fred Clark

Rotten Tomatoes® Score

TOMATOMETER®

97%

Critics Consensus: Raoul Walsh's crime drama goes further into the psychology of a gangster than most fear to tread and James Cagney's portrayal of the tragic anti-hero is constantly volatile.

Reviews

Deep Focus Review

Brian Eggert

Today, the picture stands not only as the last hurrah in Cagney's tradition of playing gangsters, but perhaps the greatest single example the actor's onscreen magnetism.

...a heist movie, a police investigation thriller, a prison drama, and an undercover cop story all at once.

Cagney is one of the all-time great gangster actors - and he's once again in top hoodlum form even in this later picture.

Oscar-winning actor James Cagney delivers one of his finest roles in Warner Bros. gangster drama White Heat after being away from the genre.

What a sad story that Cagney, a man of intelligence and taste, could not succeed making pictures of artistry and had to come back to Warners and make this tripe.

October 30, 2019

FULL REVIEW