Though he drops a couple of notches in the screen credits from his first picture, "Sinners' Holiday", James Cagney still dazzles as a top mobster's second in command and hones the skills that will find him topping the bill for 1931's "The Public Enemy". Funny how Cagney's smart aleck attitude and mannerisms got him stereotyped as a gangster right out of the block, and he made it seem all so natural.<br /><br />As for the story, Warner Brothers takes yet another stab at the menace to society theme with it's take on mob violence and competition between rival gangs. This was my first look at Lew Ayres, who heads the cast as crime boss Louie Ricarno. In an opening scene, he's out to 'teach a guy a lesson' for being a rat, and from there he sees an opportunity to bring all the local big shots together under his own umbrella. Though generally effective in the role, I did find it somewhat humorous when Ayres went into that surly pensive mood from time to time throughout the story. I also got a kick out of the scene in which Ricarno fancies himself as big a man as Napoleon, and Cagney does a mock impersonation of the dictator to the amusement of Louie's girl Doris (Dorothy Matthews).<br /><br />With the back drop of Louie going straight and retiring to Miami with his new wife, the film throws a minor curve with the autobiography he's writing. I thought for sure that police captain Pat Grady (Robert Elliott - O'Grady in the credits) had it right when he offered the suggestion - "Don't write the last chapter till the night you go to the chair". Instead, knowing that there's no safe way out of the flop house he's holed up in, Louie gussies himself up for a 'handful of cloud'. The finale is effective for Warners' purposes, the fade out hones in on the rewritten last page of the Louie Ricarno story, the 'doorway to hell' swings only one way.<br /><br />Keep a sharp eye and you'll catch a typo in the gangland slaughter headline of the newspaper Louie reads in the boarding house - it reads 'grewsome' for 'gruesome'.<br /><br />For an early talking picture, I found the film to be fairly well written and acted, most of that contribution coming from the main principals, Ayres and Cagney. I would like to have seen a better resolution of the Ricarno/Mileaway relationship, particularly since Cagney's character just disappears after his 'confession', and even more so because of his heavily implicated fling with Ricarno's wife - very risqué stuff for the 1930's. The scene in the cab when she removes her ring probably brought a few gasps to audiences of the time, don't you think?