"White Heat" is One of the Best Classic Gangster Flicks

In White Heat, James Cagney's Cody Jarret is perhaps cinema's earliest psychopath, a man flitting between rage and childish simplicity. Cagney got type-casted as the gangster in a number of movies but few variants were quite as soulful as Cody Jarret in White Heat. In Cagney's hands Cody is oddly relatable and likable; Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts' script turns Cody into a bit of tragic figure, albeit a slightly demented one. Cody isn't the film hero (he's more of an anti-hero) -- no that would be Edmond O' Brien's undercover cop -- but the story wants us to like the guy -- he is, after all, the film's protagonist -- and when Cagney bears that crooked smile of his, it's hard not to be won over. Cody has some major mommy issues and a family history of insanity, so his violent outbursts (all with absolute remorse and twisted glee) aren't totally inexplicable. And there are few better endings where a character gets exactly what they want only for it to be the total opposite of what they need than Cody's exclamations of, "Made it Ma! Top of the world!"

Grade: A-