Angels With Dirty Faces

Angels With Dirty Faces.
1938 Warner Bros. Pictures & Turner Entertainment.
Starring: James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sheridan, George Bancroft, The Dead End Kids (Billy Halop, Bobby Jordan, Leo Gorcey, Gabriel Dell, Huntz Hall, Bernard Punsly)
Director: Michael Curtiz
Available from Amazon as a single disc, or part of the Warner Gangsters Collection, Volume 1 set.

Two childhood friends, Rocky Sullivan (Cagney) and Jerry Connolly (O'Brien), rob a railroad car. Jerry is saved from being hit by a freight train by Rocky, but he is soon nabbed by the police. Jerry, who could run faster than Rocky, manages to elude the cops. Rocky grows up to become a notorious gangster, while Jerry has become a priest. He returns to the old neighborhood, where Jerry is running a home intending to keep young boys away frm a life of crime. Six of Jerry's charges (the Dead End Kids) idolize Rocky, and Jerry tries to keep his old chum from corrupting them.

However, Rocky may be undone by two of his newest associates, a crooked lawyer named Frazier (Bogart), and Keefer (Bancroft), a shady businessman and municipal contractor. Rocky foils an attempt on his life by finding Frazier and Keefer's record book with their lists of bribes to city officials. After Rocky ignores Jerry's advice to skip town before he informs the authorities, Jerry himself goes public with the information. Frazier and Keefer plot to kill Jerry, but Rocky protects his old friend by killing them both himself, which he is arrested, convicted, and sent to the electric chair for.

Before Rocky is to die, Jerry asks him to die pretending to be a screaming cowards, which would end the boys' idolization of him. Rocky refuses, but suddenly changes his mind when it's finally time to go, and needs to be dragged to the chair. The boys hear about this, and decide Rocky was a coward after all. Jerry asks them to say a prayer for him, "for a boy who couldn't run as fast" as he could.

Recommended old school gangster movie.