White Heat
Director: Raoul Walsh
Year Released: 1949
Rating: 3.0
Fascinating gangster film - Cagney is unbelievable as a seedy, cold-blooded villain (tell me: what actors today would take the greasy roles he did?). The psychological angle this film takes was considered revolutionary, though today it seems a bit too pointed and inappropriate (and the explanation for the "headaches" Cagney suffers from is particularly naive); modern day psychology in movies is a bit subtler. Some of it is silly, especially the (famous) over-the-top suicide at the end, and the police technology (the "radar device" looks like Martian antennae). Still a must see.
