Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9470 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-01-25
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 113 minutes

Studio description
In his last role as a heartless gangster, James Cagney embarks on the prison break of a lifetime in this chilling tale that features one of the most riveting finales in movie history.

Customer Reviews

"Let's play him as screwy."
After a decade long absence from the gangster genre, James Cagney comes roaring back in this Raoul Walsh classic. For a change of pace from his previous films of this type (ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES, PUBLIC ENEMY, ROARING TWENTIES, et al) Walsh and Cagney decided to play the character as being completely nuts. Is he ever! Cody Jarrett is a homicidal killer with a mother fixation and violent headaches. In one scene where Jarrett is dealing with a stool-pigeon he has locked in the trunk of his getaway car, he's calmly eating fried chicken when the man in the trunk protests he can't breath. "Oh, you need air?" He then pulls out his .45 automatic and ventilates the trunk (or boot if you are a Brit). He plugs a train engineer because one of his men blurts out his name. "You got a good memory for names," he says before he shoots the guy, kicks Virginia Mayo (who has never looked more beautiful and alluring) off a chair and ends in the famous "top of the world" finale. For films of this sort, it doesn't get better. Also starring is Virginia Mayo as Verna Jarrett, his wife, Edmund O'Brien as Vic Pardo (a federal agent who infiltrates Jarrett's gang) , Steve Cochran as the scheming Big Ed Somers and Margaret Wycherly -- who was SGT York's mom in the Gary Cooper classic -- as Ma Jarrett, the mother from hell who's "Always looking out for my Cody." The final scene is probably the best remembered line from the movie: "Made it Ma! Top of the world!"

Sizzle- for - shizzle , Ma !
I try not to become exorbinate with words on my film reviews and edit it down to thirty words or less. I don't have that problem here. I can sum it up in five.

James Cagney at his best.


Then again...that's three words and name. But who's reading the fine print ? My bad , you are. :) And since you are....get this gangster classic !

See What An Overprotective Mother Can Do To You !!!
I am viewing Warner Bros. wonderful "Gangster" collection, featuring mostly Cagney movies and this classic like the others in the set, all are high quality transfers and extras simulating an entree of features a moviegoer would sit through in the 1930's and the 1940's, a preview cartoon and a newsreel are the extras besides the feature and the feature with commentary.
As in the case of White Heat, we have an older James Cagney, meaner than the lovelorn somewhat sensitive gangster of "The Roaring 20's", a mature insane more cutthroat killer than found in the early "Public Enemy" giving this flick a decidedly modern twist with the psychological underpinnings of an overbearing Mother causing hypochondiac headaches in Cagney, as well as his inability to enter into any meaningful relationship with people.
The motive here is not just greed and power but viciousness,anger at betrayal and the rumblings of insanity beneath his surface.
When Cagney's world crumbles so must everyone Else's.
Other's have dealt with the story and all I can add is that this classic is entertaining and a must see.