G Men (1935)
Directed By: William Keighley
Written By: Seton I. Miller
Starring: James Cagney, Ann Dvorak, Margaret Lindsay
Length: 85 min.
Genre: Crime Drama
James Cagney plays a lawyer, James "Brick" Davis, who is recruited to join the FBI. He hesitates at first, but after his fiend is killed while trying to arrest a gangster, Brick joins the force for the purpose of trying to find and bring his friend's killer to justice. There's a bit of an issue though. His law school tuition was paid for by a local mob boss named Mac which I'm sure won't come up again.
In a storyline that is a copy of Cagney's movie Here Comes the Navy from the previous year, Cagney has a mutual feeling of mistrust/hatred (in this case, his Instructor Jeff McCord) while chasing after his sister. I'm starting to think I'm going to see that a lot in Cagney's movies. Or maybe this was just a coincidence.
The movie had some good action scenes, moves along at a nice pace, Cagney is great as always. Safe to say I've become a fan and not just of his crime drama roles. He's won me over as simply a great actor.
On the other hand, nothing about the film really stands out or is all that memorable. In fact, I was about to say after my last review "I'm all caught now" but then I rechecked my list and saw G Men way down at the bottom and thought "...I watched that, didn't I?" so I watched the trailer and went "Oh, right, I did watch this." That's how memorable this movie was.
Overall, it was a decent crime drama starring James Cagney. Nothing more, nothing less.
My Rating: 5 / 10
IMDB Rating: 7.2 (3.7k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 100% Critics* (3-0), 68% of Audience (500+ ratings)
* - --% on RT, I guess having only 3 critic reviews isn't enough to 'officially' give it a 100%