Film

Angels with Dirty Faces

James Cagney at his most magnetic plays Rocky Sullivan, a small-time crook idolized by the tenement kids who watch him swagger home from prison, while his childhood friend-turned-priest tries to pull them onto a better path. Fast, snappy, morally loaded Warner Bros. crime picture, famous for its ambiguous, gut-punch ending. For anyone who wants old Hollywood swagger with real teeth.

TMDb rating7.5

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The Roaring Twenties1939

Cagney and Bogart reunite the following year for an even bigger rise-and-fall saga, tracing a WWI vet's slide into bootlegging with the same doomed, magnetic energy.

But It's longer and more sprawling, with a narrated newsreel structure that some find clunky next to this film's tighter plotting.

The Roaring Twenties poster

White Heat1949

Cagney's other legendary gangster, Cody Jarrett, is meaner, madder, and more Freudian — the "top of the world" finale is one of cinema's great exits.

But There's no priest, no redemption arc, no ambiguity — just a much darker, more disturbing character study.

White Heat poster

The Public Enemy1931

The film that built the Cagney gangster persona from scratch, brutal and startlingly modern for its age, with the grapefruit scene still shocking decades later.

But Rougher, earlier filmmaking — the pacing and performance styles feel more theatrical than the polished 1938 picture.

The Public Enemy poster

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Something you would not have found on your own.

The Wire2002

Both are built around children who model themselves on the local criminal because he's the only adult who looks like he's winning — The Wire just refuses the priest's easy answer.

Watch the exact same tragedy — kids on the corner idolizing the neighborhood's one successful criminal because no one else offers them a future — stretched across five novelistic seasons instead of 97 minutes.

But It's a massive time commitment with a huge cast and no tidy Code-era moral bow at the end.

The Wire poster
More like this (8)

Little Caesar1931no page yet

Edward G. Robinson's rise-and-fall gangster classic hits the same beats — small-time hood claws to the top, then loses everything — with equal ferocity and bite.

But Robinson's Rico is colder and less charming than Rocky Sullivan; there's less warmth to hang onto.

Scarface1932

Howard Hawks' original, with Paul Muni going full operatic in a gangster picture so violent it got censored on release — a direct ancestor of this one.

But Even more melodramatic and less subtle in its morality-play framing than "Angels."

Scarface poster

Dead End1937no page yet

Bogart again, plus the actual "Dead End Kids" (including Billy Halop) a year before they turned up here, in a tenement drama about kids choosing between crime and decency.

But It's stagier and more theatrical, adapted closely from a Broadway play, with less momentum than a straight gangster picture.

Boys Town1938no page yet

Spencer Tracy's Father Flanagan tackles the same "can one good man save troubled boys from crime" question, released the same year, with more sentiment and less menace.

But It's much softer and more openly tearjerking, with no gangster glamour or menace — just wholesome uplift throughout.

Manhattan Melodrama1934no page yet

Clark Gable and William Powell play childhood friends who grow into a gangster and a district attorney — the exact same fork-in-the-road structure, with a killer ending.

But Slicker, more romantic-triangle MGM gloss than the grittier Warner Bros. tenement realism you get here.

On the Waterfront1954

Brando's conscience-stricken dockworker wrestles with the same Catholic guilt and neighborhood corruption, filmed with grittier, Method-era realism that shows where the genre eventually went.

But Heavier, slower, and more overtly "important" — it's prestige drama, not a fast crime picture.

On the Waterfront poster

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance1962

Both films end by deliberately manufacturing a myth for the good of the community, and ask whether that lie is mercy or cowardice.

John Ford's Western asks the same question this film ends on — is it better to tell people a comforting lie than the ugly truth — and delivers one of cinema's great closing lines about it.

But It's a slow, talky Western with none of the tenement grit or gangster energy — a completely different texture and pace.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance poster

Underworld1927

This is the blueprint Cagney's persona was built from — watch it to see the gangster-as-folk-hero myth being invented in real time, before the Code even existed to punish it.

Josef von Sternberg's silent crime picture essentially invented the whole outfit — the fedora, the code of honor, the gangster as tragic romantic figure — eleven years before Cagney perfected it.

But Silent, slow by modern standards, and its melodrama can feel quaint next to the sound-era snap of "Angels."

Underworld poster

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Recommended by

The Public Enemy, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Going My Way, The Bells of St. Mary's, White Heat, The Roaring Twenties, Underworld