A truly nasty, snake-like James Cagney stars as the ruthless Tom Powers in this punchy gangster classic. It starts in his juvenile delinquent days of pranks and petty theft and then flashes forward to his doomed career as a mob strongarm in an expensive suit. Rags, riches, and then ignoble death—that’s how these Depression-era gangster movies work and this one has the most brutal ending of its contemporaries.
The most famous scene here is the one in which Cagney shoves a halved grapefruit into girlfriend Mae Clarke’s face. However, my personal favorite moment is when Cagney shoots the horse that fatally threw one of his friends. The scene was taken from a story about real life Chicago gangster Louis “Two Gun” Alterie, who reportedly kidnapped and executed the horse that killed his friend, Nails Morton.