Grimy and entertaining Depression-era Warner Bros. social melodrama about juvenile reform schools, the doomed kids who end up in them, and the sadistic whip-crackers who run them. The ray of light here is James Cagney, charming as ever and owning the screen as one of his classic likable gangsters. Through some corrupt machinations, he ends up appointed as the head of a miserable boy’s reformatory and he decides to make changes so that it’s a place of true rehabilitation rather than the soul-ruining torture house that it was before. Along the way he faces serious resistance.
It sounds corny and it is, but it takes a striking and lurid path to its positive message. Its scenes of unrepentant juvenile delinquency, violent death, bad guys who happen to be good guys, and good guys who turn scary when crossed would have been unacceptable after the Hay’s Code enforcement of 1934. Today, it’s a zippy little curiosity.
Along with Cagney, the other great performance here is from Dudley Digges as the villainous previous head of the school. Digges here is one of the top unsung nasty bad guys of 1930s Hollywood movies. He’s a fat, bald, unfeeling old demon with not a trace of empathy or sensitivity in his scowl.