JAMES CAGNEY & HUMPHREY BOGART IN 'THE ROARING TWENTIES'

Title: THE ROARING TWENTIES Year: 1939 Rating: *****

At one point, only fifteen-minutes in, when James Cagney shuffles across the cheap apartment room rented with buddy Frank McHugh, saying how he's tired of being pushed around, there's been at least two short films that already played out: beginning with a war story involving Cagney alongside a shifty yet dependable Humphrey Bogart and affable Jeffrey Lynn, leaping into exploding foxholes when not picking-off nameless Germans...

And it's hardly better back home, where there are no jobs, leading to the inevitable but far from rushed progression into the life of bootlegging liquor during the titular Prohibition, that the film itself... written/produced by Mark Hellinger with Raoul Walsh directing... is even more against than the law-breaking, often murderous shortcuts...

Gladys George and Humphrey Bogart in THE ROARING TWENTIES

Escalating when Cagney reunites with Bogart, now both hard-working criminals: one stealing stolen booze from a ship while the other's hired to passively protect it: working for then against head honcho Paul Kelley, all during the attempted relationship between Cagney and once underage war-letter-writer turned singer/dancer Priscilla Lane: with experienced nightclub dame Gladys George on the side...

Making THE ROARING TWENTIES as much an unrequited romantic drama as an edgy and suspenseful, dirty-business-driven gangster flick, serving as the pinnacle to Cagney's uncompromising cinematic characterizations while the decade-later Walsh collaboration WHITE HEAT is the peak.

James Cagney and Gladys George in THE ROARING TWENTIES

James Cagney and Frank McHugh in THE ROARING TWENTIES

James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart and Jeffrey Lynn in THE ROARING TWENTIES

James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart in THE ROARING TWENTIES

James Cagney and Priscilla Lane in THE ROARING TWENTIES

James Cagney and Gladys George in THE ROARING TWENTIES

Humphrey Bogart in THE ROARING TWENTIES

James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart in THE ROARING TWENTIES with Abner Biberman

James Cagney with Elliott Sullivan in THE ROARING TWENTIES

James Cagney and King Kong and G-Men's Robert Armstrong in THE ROARING TWENTIES

James Cagney and Gladys George in THE ROARING TWENTIES

Priscilla Lane in THE ROARING TWENTIES

James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart in THE ROARING TWENTIES

Humphrey Bogart about to get deadly in THE ROARING TWENTIES

Humphrey Bogart in THE ROARING TWENTIES with Abner Biberman

James Cagney with "clothesline in the kisser" Paul Kelley in THE ROARING TWENTIES

James Cagney and Priscilla Lane in THE ROARING TWENTIES

James Cagney is "tired of being pushed around" in THE ROARING TWENTIES

James Cagney, Frank McHugh and Jeffrey Lynn in THE ROARING TWENTIES

James Cagney, Frank McHugh and Jeffrey Lynn in THE ROARING TWENTIES

James Cagney in THE ROARING TWENTIES

George Meeker and James Cagney in THE ROARING TWENTIES

James Cagney in THE ROARING TWENTIES with Priscilla Lane

James Cagney in THE ROARING TWENTIES

James Cagney in THE ROARING TWENTIES with Joe Sawyer & Humphrey Bogart

James Cagney and Priscilla Lane in THE ROARING TWENTIES

James Cagney and Frank McHugh in THE ROARING TWENTIES

James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart in THE ROARING TWENTIES

James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart in THE ROARING TWENTIES with Jeffrey Lynn

Humphrey Bogart in THE ROARING TWENTIES with Abner Biberman

James Cagney in THE ROARING TWENTIES with Abner Biberman

The Criterion Collection Blu Ray