One of the big three influential gangster flicks of the Depression—the others are The Public Enemy and Scarface. All three are about the exact same thing: an ambitious tough guy who muscles his way up through the mob ranks, lives well for awhile, and then sees it all come tumbling down. All three were hits that some critics accused of glorifying criminals. And all three made stars out of their leads. Here, the great, crab-faced Edward G. Robinson makes his name as Little Caesar, the smallest and meanest guy in Chicago’s criminal underworld. See him rise and see him fall, all 5’5″ of him.
This one’s a little plotty and light on the action, and Mervyn LeRoy’s stagey direction doesn’t help, but it’s still entertaining and great to look at. All you really need to know is that everyone in the movie is either Edward G. Robinson’s henchman or someone he’s trying to run out of town, with the exception of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as a gangster who wants to break away from the criminal life to work as a nightclub dancer (a character based on George Raft).
Adapted from W.R. Burnett’s popular novel.