'G' Men

“G” Men (1935)

Runtime: 85 minutes

Directed by: William Keighley

Starring: James Cagney, Margaret Lindsay, Ann Dvorak, Robert Armstrong, Barton MacLane

From: Warner Bros.

As I whittle down what I have on the DVR, it was time to see something recorded off of TCM a little more than a month ago. It is “Vintage Blair Russell” for me in this case: a movie I've known of for a long while yet put off actually experiencing myself. The idea of seeing James Cagney as an FBI agent fighting against gangsters rather than as a gangster himself-that intrigued me.

It is basically what you'd expect when you hear that Cagney plays an attorney who joins the bureau on the advice of a friend... Old James is an honest lawyer who has integrity and won't deal with low-life SOB's (insert your own jokes if you wish) so he sounds like an ideal candidate. Tragedy happens and that gives him the impetus to join. There you see him train for the job (including learning jiu-jitsu; that must have been a rare sight for Western eyes in 1935) and a superior is wary of him but of course he's up for being an agent.

What may be unexpected is that Cagney had a mentor who was... a crime boss. However, the mentorship was for Cagney to NOT be a criminal himself. That added intrigue and interest. Besides this being an entertaining yarn which has such things as the 1930's version of forensics, there's enough tough guy talk, shootouts, and violence within the standards of the Hays Code to thrill me. It's definitely worthwhile for those that also dig the 30's gangster or crime drama pictures. This was a typically solid Warner Brothers production filled with their stock players at the time, including Margaret Lindsay and Ann Dvorak. Some may be jealous that Cagney's character romanced both Lindsay and Dvorak-if only we could all be so lucky.

One last note: the only print of this movie available is from the 1949 re-release which does the peculiar thing of having an intro set at FBI headquarters where they show this film to a class of new recruits, treating it like this was a documentary or something. At least that's the only difference compared to what was released in '35.