Category: Crime drama

The Secret Agent (2025)

Dark political drama, with a surreally multi-layered construction, challenging but rewarding

Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho

Cast: Wagner Moura (Armando Solimões), Carlos Francisco (Senior Alexandre), Tânia Maria (Dona Sebastiana), Robério Diógenes (Euclides), Gabriel Leone (Bobbi Borba), Roney Villela (Augusto Borba), Kaiony Venâncio (Vilmar), Maria Fernanda Cândido (Elza), Thomás Aquino (Valdemar), Udo Kier (Hans)

For decades, Brazil lived under a military dictatorship which controlled the country with a brutal, often hidden, hand, spinning a web of tall stories and mythologising to hide its ruthlessness and corruption. This forms the backdrop of Kleber Mendonça Filho’s dark shaggy-dog story of the ‘mischief’ (as the film puts it) of this terrible time, where truth was a hostage of fortune and violence and death could be dealt out at any time by corrupt forces and their accomplices in law enforcement.

In 1977, Armando Solimões (Wagner Moura) arrives in Recife during carnival season under the name of Marcelo. It slowly becomes clear he is a former university professor of engineering, on the run from a contract on his life taken out by the corrupt businessman appointed to run his department. In Recife, Armando hides out at a refuge run by former anarcho-communist Dona Sebastiana (Tânia Maria) and reconnects with his son Marcelo who is being raised by Alexandre (Carlos Francisco), father of Armando’s murdered wife Fátima (Alica Carvalho). A sympathetic contact lands him a role in the police records office, giving Armando opportunity to search for the file of his mother, a woman ‘disappeared’ and murdered by the junta. Meanwhile, two hitmen Bobbi (Gabriel Leone) and Augusto (Roney Villela), hunt him down.

Mendonça’s film is put together with the moody leanness of a 1970s conspiracy thriller, mixed with the portmanteau scope of Altman. In its muted colours it has a grim sense that unseen forces watching around every corner. At the same time, it’s a snapshot of a moment in time, presenting events in Brazil from a range of perspectives, from the casually corrupt police, to campaigners for justice, to the smorgasbord of refugees in Dona Sebastiana’s commune, including Ghanian immigrants and a persecuted female dentist. These events move smoothly, sometimes with surreal touches and moments of black comedy, with Mendonça not letting us forget that in a country as ill-organised and idiosyncratic as this one, bizarre events and brutal killings are everyday events.

An idea of the sort of country Brazil is, is established from the start, with the film’s atmospheric, tense and darkly funny opening, set in a country-side gas-station. On the forecourt, under a piece of cardboard, lies a slowly rotting corpse of an attempted shoplifter, shot several days ago. When Armando stops for petrol, he’s told the authorities have been informed but have dragged their heels about collecting the body. At which point the police arrive… but have no interest in the body (from which, wild dogs need to be constantly chased away from) instead intimidating Armando, attempting to extract a bribe (he hands over his cigarettes) before disappearing over the horizon. As Armando drives away, the dogs return.

That’s Brazil, it seems, in a nutshell. As well as being expertly filmed, acted and staged, that opening captures the entire mood of black, hopeless, humour in a perfect fusion of Altman and Leone. The more we see of the authorities, the more it confirms our impression of them as greedy, useless bullies interested only in puffing their own position and slapping down anyone who looks like a lefty troublemaker.

The leading cops at the station Armando works at are lazy, racist egotists who idolise a German tailor, played in a fine cameo by Udo Kier, they think is a Nazi war veteran (oblivious to the fact he is a Jewish Holocaust survivor who despises them) and don’t think twice about tossing the bodies of internees into the sea. A severed leg, discovered in the belly of a shark by a marine biologist, is just such a victim – and the cursory (and, for them, unnecessary) attempts to identify this leg’s owner (and to dispose of it a second time) forms another darkly comic thread to the film.

This leg becomes, itself, the centre of the sort of absurdist fantasia that the authorities use to hide their own brutality. In Mendonça’s Carpenter-esque scene of bizarro body horror, we watch a staging of the media’s own report that a series of brutal beatings of gay men in a public park was carried out by this leg (as opposed to, obviously, the police). The police are, of course, fully clued up about the real cause of any violence, just as they have no problem palling around with the cashiered military officers who are now working as private hitman – and are happy to give them tips to their target.

In all this dark corruption, any splash of hope is welcome. Much of this comes from Wagner Moura’s toweringly committed performance as Armando, full of world-weary frustration and bubbling resentment at injustice and a desperate commitment to try and pluck escape from this life of fear. Moura’s Armando is a man of quiet reserve, decency and goodness who has had to become hardened to the circumstances he is in – who finds himself full of rage in a way he never dreamed possible. He carries burdens of grief and guilt at the loss of his wife (unaffected by his father-in-law’s correct suspicions that he was not always faithful) and his attempt to gain details about his mother from the labyrinthine police records he works among gives him some sort of hope of inner peace.

Testimony and the struggle for truth becomes a key theme in The Secret Agent which suddenly surprises us to a flash-forward framing device that shows a modern-day research volunteer transcribing recorded audio conversations between Armando and his resistance group contacts. The truth remains as elusive today as it does in Armando’s time: events unclear to the researchers are clearer to us (as we can see them not just hear them), but many mysteries and questions remain hazy today, with memories and half-truths often the only answers we have.

This is reflected as well in the film’s structure, which drip feeds information slowly. It’s nearly two thirds into the film, until Armando’s full background is made clear, and several events early in the film are only explained into any form of coherent sense by the context provided much later. This can make The Secret Agent a challenging watch: it’s a film that can slip through your fingers as easily as an eel. But it’s reflective of a country where reality itself is hard to grasp: where people can disappear without trace, life can end out of nowhere from an officially sanctioned bullet on the street, your entire life story can be altered by the press and tall tales reported as gospel.

Through it all, The Secret Agent is perhaps striking because (despite its title) it has no espionage in it at all. Only the desperate wading through a swamp of secrets and lies with no clear answers, where truth and humanity can be easily lost. The fact it manages to do this while not losing a dark wit – and powered by Moura’s deeply humane performance – is a testament to Mendonça’s graceful direction, which in its simplicity makes a lasting impression of a world where truth and reality are as much in flux as peace and justice.

The Big House (1930)

Foundational Hollywood prison film, not only establishes many genre tropes but does it with genuine style

Director: George W Hill

Cast: Chester Morris (Morgan), Wallace Beery (Butch), Lewis Stone (Warden), Robert Montgomery (Kent), Leila Hyams (Anne), George F Marion (Pop), JC Nugent (Marlowe), Karl Dane (Olsen), DeWitt Jennings (Wallace), Matthew Betz (Gopher)

We’re all familiar with the prison movie: cell yards, newly arrived prisoners, old lags, gangs, exercise yards, tough wardens, snitches, shivs, escape plans, betting on insect races, coolers, bad food, riots… many of these now age old cliches first sprang into life in The Big House, the first major prison movie released in Hollywood. And it’s a good one, a well-paced mix of character study and morality tale with a surprisingly action packed ending.

In an overcrowded prison, where conditions are as tough as the inmates, new arrival Kent (Robert Montgomery) is nervous. He’s a rich guy struggling to adjust to spending the next seven years in the slammer after he drove the car in a fatal hit-and-run. He’s chucked into a cell with two tough inmates: Morgan (Chester Morris), a strong-and-silent type who takes no nonsense, and Butch (Wallace Beery), his best friend who swings between friendly and threatening. As mutterings about escape plans and prison feuds heat up, Kent goes to increasingly selfish attempts to save his skin, against the advice of Morgan, who is dreaming of his imminent parole.

“Prison doesn’t give a man a yellow streak, but if he has one it brings it out.” Those are the wise words of Lewis Stone’s gruff, patrician warden. It’s fair to say Kent doesn’t listen. One of the neatest tricks The Big House pulls off is the decoy protagonist. As we watch Kent’s intimidating arrival and processing, the ferrying him from room-to-room as he is reduced to another overall-clad number (48642), our natural instinct is to feel sorry for him as Robert Montgomery’s eyes widen in shock and horror. But Kent isn’t our hero. In fact, if anything, he’s the villain.

The more we see of Kent, the more we realise he’s a spoilt rich kid who, uniquely among the main prisoners, takes no responsibility for his crime (even the sociopathic Butch does that). He will betray anyone or anything to try and lesson his sentence: and as a seasoned old-timer tells him, the best material for that is snitching on other prisoners. It’s not long before Kent is nervously planting a shiv in Morgan’s bed (leading to the cancellation of Morgan’s parole), and his utter lack of any sense of principle beyond protecting himself is directly responsible for the concluding prison riot blood bath.

Instead, The Big House’s real hero is Morgan. Played with stoic firmness by Chester Morris, Morgan may well be a criminal (tellingly, of the three principles, he’s a professional thief giving him the most ‘sympathetic’ crime, with no body count) but he has a code of loyalty to his fellows. That doesn’t mean he won’t step in against bullying – he orders Butch to return the cigarettes he wrestles from Kent – but it does mean he’ll turn a dutiful blind eye to their misdemeanours. He sticks firmly to the code of the prison – don’t snitch – even while he planning to go straight. In The Big House, it’s fascinating that is the stool pigeon and snitch who is morally the lowest-of-the-low.

That’s arguably even lower than Butch, even though he’s a sociopathic murderer who wistfully talks about his crimes with slight regret only because they got him caught. But, despite this – and even though, when the riot comes, Butch proves himself absolutely, ruthlessly, without morals – Butch is strangely likeable. Perhaps because Wallace Beery (Oscar-nominated) plays him with a mix of childish innocence as well as brutish bullying. Butch, with his illiteracy and delight in games like racing insects, along with his affectionate readiness to trust (and his blinding rage when he feels betrayed) is like a big kid. He bounds around the yard like the king of the playground.

The heart of The Big House is the close friendship (and, while surely unintentional, it’s hard not to see a homoerotic undercurrent) between Butch and Morgan. These two are inseparable, trust each other completely, tell each other everything and won’t hear a word against each other from someone else. They are both familiar with the slammer, a dark corridor with several tiny, dark cells. Butch gets chucked in there after leading a dinner hall protest at the terrible food – the protest that will lead to him passing his shiv to Kent who then plants it on Morgan to gain favour with the guards. This leads to Morgan’s spell there – where, in a fixed shot of the empty corridor, Hill has us overhear the shouted conversation between the two as Morgan vows revenge and Butch naively argues he can’t believe Kent would do that.

Morgan’s rejected parole leads to his own escape. It’s a slightly forced touch of melodrama that, on escape, he of course meets and falls in love with Kent’s sister Anne (Leila Hyams) who recognises him. It’s, of course, the silver bullet that sees Morgan vowing to go straight and allowing him to tick the film’s crucial moral boxes: he forswears crime (and willingly returns to prison when caught) but without sacrificing his loyalty to the prison code of no snitching. Once again, this is contrasted with the yellow Kent, who won’t admit his guilt and has no honour at all among the thieves.

The Big House culminates in Butch’s bungled escape attempt, made infinitely worse by Kent’s cowardly actions and Butch’s capacity for violence when crossed. You have to question the competence of the prison: crowded or not, Butch and his gang manage to smuggle in several guns, and the Warden’s refusal to even consider negotiating a release of captured guards Butch is hopefully not standard practice. This is probably the only prison film you’ll see where a tank rolls in to settle the matter (one possible cliché no one picked up), but the real heart of the clash is Morgan’s attempt to both stick to his new-found determination to do the right thing, without betraying his brotherly love for Butch.

It makes for a tense, high-octane, surprisingly ruthless final act in a prison film that sets out the rules but also tells a compelling, exciting and engaging story. With very good contrasting performances from Morris, Beery and Montgomery, it’s snappily directed with real verve by Hill, whose camera soaks up the impressively grand sets and then throws in to the midst of the violence. It’s interesting to see its moral judgements on its characters: loyalty prized above all other virtues – would that still be the case today?

No Other Choice (2025)

Jet black comedy, that makes strong, entertaining political points while testing our sympathies

Director: Park Chan-wook

Cast: Lee Byung-hun (Yoo Man-su), Son Ye-jin (Lee Mi-ri), Park Hee-soon (Choi Seon-chul), Lee Sung-min (Goo Beom-mo), Yeom Hye-ran (Lee A-ra), Cha Seung-won (Ko Si-jo), Yoo Yeon-seok (Oh Jin-ho)

Technology changes the world, sometimes so much it leaves people behind. That’s the starting point of Park Chan-wook’s dark (very dark!) comic drama, No Other Choice, which looks at the surreally bleak ends sudden unemployment in a changing labour market has on a regular joe who prides himself on being his family’s provider. It takes Parasite and mixes it with Kind Hearts and Coronets, but with the mood dyed jet black and a complex anti-hero who becomes darker the more we learn about him.

That anti-hero is Yoo Man-su (Lee Byung-hun), a hard-working paper industry supervisor, right up until his new employers follow-up a 25-year loyalty reward with a P45. Because who needs so humans when your factory can be run by a machine? Flash-forward a year later and Man-su is desperate: he can’t land a new job in the reduced paper industry and his wife Lee Mi-ri (Son Ye-jin) is suggesting it’s time to sell the home he spent a decade working to buy. Man-su decides on a desperate new plan: identify his more qualified rivals for a possible vacancy, murder them, then murder paper plant manager Choi Seon-chul (Park Hee-soon) and apply for his job. What could wrong?

This extreme response to feeling irrelevant in a changing world becomes the heart of Park Chan-wook’s black comedy, directed with his customary sharp-edged beauty with images and camera angles that make you want to swoon. It also walks a tight line between portraying Man-su as sympathetic, an (at first) laughably incompetent killer and, increasingly, a deeply flawed, bitterly resentful man, who resolutely refuses to adapt himself in any way to a changing world.

At first of course it’s hard not to feel sorry for Man-su, cast aside like a dirty off-cut from a company he has given his whole life too. No Other Choice takes its title from the cringe-worthy, rent-a-therapy mantra a jaw-droppingly shallow careers advisor pushes a roomful of redundant staff to repeat over and over again. It’s a mantra that stresses their lack of power and also bluntly sums up how they feel about their future: there are sod all real choices out there, only to adapt or die.

That’s certainly what Man-su, a hard-working supervisor respected by his staff, finds a year later. In a beautiful static shot of grinding irrelevance, a year flashes by of Man-su humiliatingly stacking shelves having failed time-and-time again at applications. A parade of humiliation follows: Man-su stripping out of his overalls in front of his unsympathetic (much younger) manager to attend an interview (shot in security camera distance long-shot); Man-su flunking an interview with clumsy answers to obvious questions, squinting at his interviewers sitting in front of a sun-bathed window; the smug father of his adopted son’s best friend offering to buy a house Man-su has poured his heart and soul into, while constantly disparaging it; literally begging outside a bathroom for Seon-chul to read his CV….

Is it any wonder he is overcome with something between resentment and despair? All that hard-earned respect, years of experience and mastery of the intricate details of paper production means nothing. All those promises of working hard and getting your due reward exposed as a puff of bullshit.

Maybe murder is a fair way to deal with this. After all, it’s not really his choice, right? Advertising a job vacancy at a fake company, he collects his rival’s CVs and carefully selects the better qualified to remove them from the jobs market. He then embarks on a life of crime which Park depicts with a haphazard chaos. Man-su is no expert: he needs multiple attempts to even take a pop at his first target, leaves key evidence behind at crime scenes (only chance saves from arrest) and makes a mess of hiding his tracks.

Lee Byung-hun has a gloriously disbelieving look to him, constantly unable to fully process what’s happening to him. Instead, he’s trying desperately to keep up a front that slowly collapses. It’s a brilliant performance, one that keeps us liking Man-su, even as his previously well-hidden dark side bubbles to the surface. Man-su prides himself as a careful, methodical gardener and he applies the same to his family, who he wants to protect and nurture. Each murder sees him crush more and more of this quality in himself: the man who tries to shelter his first victim from his wife’s infidelity, later finds himself comfortable dispatching others with cold-faced, determined ruthlessness.

It’s part of what makes No Other Choice such a genuinely surprising film. It would have been very easy for Park to embrace the dark comedy of Man-su’s Kind Hearts removal of obstacles. You could well imagine a Hitchcockian black comedy version. But what Park does is make us question our sympathies with Man-su. Pride is shown as his major flaw. Despite a multitude of transferable skills, he never considers new careers (something he even berates one of his targets for not doing, a rant clearly aimed as much at himself). He refuses free treatment for his tooth infection from Mi-ri’s charming dentist boss. He doesn’t attempt to change his lifestyle – or outgoings – during unemployment, burning through his redundancy package. He can’t imagine anything other than stepping back into an identical position to the one he has left.

On top of this, he’s an insecure, fragile man. A recovering alcoholic, Mi-ri makes clear when on the booze he was short-tempered, even striking their son. He becomes consumed with jealousy at her friendship with her boss (even, pathetically, asking to smell her underwear to check she has remained faithful). He’s very aware of his poor background and limited academic achievements. It becomes clear his job had grown to define him as a man of worth: without it he’s terrified that he is nothing, for all Mi-ri makes clear she doesn’t feel like this (much like the wife of his first victim makes clear its not her husband’s unemployment that’s the problem, more his drunken, self-destructive, self-pity).

Park doesn’t make it easy with Man-su’s victims. These aren’t comic portraits, but deeply human figures, both of whom are eerie self-reflections of Man-su. Goo Beuom is a tragically self-pitying alcoholic. Ko Si-jo is a devoted father of a young daughter, working over time to try and provide his family. These aren’t comic caricatures we can enjoy watching get bumped off (like multiple Alec Guinnesses) but living-breathing people, touched by tragedy. That’s why Man-su can barely bring himself to look at them when the moment comes.

It’s a darkness that starts running more and more through No Other Choice as Man-su’s determination to regain his status starts to destroy the very things he claims to value most: his family, principles and peace of mind. No Other Choice is fiercely critical of a world of AI-powered industrialisation where human workers are irrelevant: but Chan-wook refuses to romanticise the bitter realities of the people left enraged and resentful at the impact on their lives. It makes for an uncomfortable and challenging comedy, full of moral quandaries and sharp political statements.

Marty Supreme (2025)

Tension and anxiety overwhelm a dark caper film that’s easier to respect than enjoy

Director: Josh Safdie

Cast: Timothée Chalamet (Marty Mauser), Gwyneth Paltrow (Kay Stone), Odessa A’zion (Rachel Mizler), Kevin O’Leary (Milton Rockwell), Tyler Okonma (Wally), Abel Ferrara (Ezra Mishkin), Fran Drescher (Rebecca Mauser), Luke Manley (Dion Galanis), John Catsimatidis (Christopher Galanis), Géza Röhrig (Bela Kletzki)

It’s 1952 and Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet) is in the gutter aiming for the stars. A prodigiously talented table tennis player, he’s convinced it’s his destiny to become the world champion and face of the sport. To achieve this, he’ll go to any lengths lying, cheating and stealing. Marty relies on his relentless charisma to rope people in to support his increasingly risky scams and ploys. Among these are Rachel (Odessa A’zion), the married childhood friend he has got pregnant and Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow) a retired Hollywood star, married to ruthless billionaire Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary).

Marty Supreme initially feels like it’s going to be a plucky underdog sports movie, with triumph due to defeat over adversity. What it actually turns out to be is something far closer to Safdie’s Uncut Gems, an immersive, sometimes hard to watch study in a man almost unaware of how frantically (and self-destructively) he is trying to keep lots of balls in the air. The bulk of the film focuses on Marty going to increasingly desperate lengths to secure the funding to get to the Tokyo World Championships. This picaresque journey sails into a swamp of stress and tension, involving gangsters with missing dogs, gun-toting New Jersey rednecks, sporting jocks furious at being hustled at table tennis, corrupt policemen in Central Park and constant parade of dangers, humiliations and threats with the odd spark of jet-black humour.

This is shot with a close-focused, shaky-cam series of close-ups, jerkily edited that practically spreads the stress of the on-screen desperation and disguised fear to the audience. The dialogue is frequently a parade of shouting, as the furiously deceived or exploited scream in between the never-ending stream of bare-faced, confidently delivered lies from Marty. And at its heart is charismatic dreamer Marty, who believes rules don’t apply to him and whose chaotic impulse control constantly pushes things further than can safely go, leading to him constantly seizing failure from success. Go into this expecting a lot of fun and laughs and you are probably in for a disappointment: go on expecting to be put through the wringer, and you will be better prepared!

Marty is a not a million miles from a Trump or Boris: a man of charisma and persuasion able to influence people to things, despite his shameless track record of instinctive lies and selfishness. Chalamet gives an extraordinary, screen-burningly vivid performance creating a man of total and complete certainty that he has a special destiny and therefore the normal rules of life do not apply to him, making him completely comfortable with routinely using and then abandoning the people around him. The fact he does this but still makes it constantly understandable why so many people keep coming back to Marty (despite being constantly stung) is a tribute to his soulfulness.

Beyond his in-the-moment confidence, Marty is a desperate, almost-principle-free force-of-nature, constantly re-spinning himself and his actions to new circumstances or audiences. Outrages become triumphs, lovers become sisters, compromises become commitments… Nothing is as it seems. His ego is also stunning: he demands tournament organisers put him up in the Ritz (where he eventually abuses the free bar), seduces Paltrow’s movie star largely it seems out of wanting to be seen as an equal and throws a colossal temper tantrum when outmatched at a tournament.

He’s constantly reinventing himself. Ideas he rejects as ridiculous or humiliating – a tour as half-time entertainment for the Harlem GlobeTrotters or an exhibition match with his Japanese rival – are later repackaged by him as his own flashes of inspiration when he eventually decides to do them. He genuinely can’t understand why others don’t see his greatness, or why the table tennis authorities can’t see his grandstanding and temper on court might be the best thing to grow the sport in the American market.

Marty believes he has all the tools for success, but his vaulting ambition and relentless energy is constantly undermined by his recklessness and tendency to act and, most especially, speak before he thinks constantly blows him up. He frequently turns on would-be supporters and friends with spontaneous abuse or smart-arse comments. He isn’t cruel (he says “I love you” persistently after various rude comments), but the damage is done. Over the course of film he’ll make a shockingly off-colour Holocaust joke (even he clocks the reaction, nervously saying it’s okay he’s Jewish), mocks Rockwell’s loss of his son fighting the same Japanese he’s now doing business with and bluntly tells Rachel she can’t understand him because she is not special (like he is).

Marty is, however, a phenomenally gifted table tennis player. Marty Supreme’s shooting of the sport is electrically fast (Chalamet trained for months to master the fast-pace, wildly aggressive style Marty plays with) and its staging of the matches is a surprisingly relaxing and entertaining. Especially when compared to the nerve-shredding anxiety-inducing terror of Marty’s less than successful hustling and scam career. Chalamet’s injects subtle panic and desperation under his relentless confidence.

Confidence is secretly what is lacking from retired Hollywood star Kay Stone, played with a wearily amused energy by Gwyneth Paltrow, both flattered and intrigued by the much younger Marty’s interest (you can see In Paltrow’s face the enjoyment behind her surface exasperation), This helps spark a desire to kickstart her career with a Broadway play – an awful looking Tennesse Wiliams pastiche, co-starring a self-important Brando-style method actor she despises (and Marty humiliates, to her delight). Her desire to be loved again is clear. There is a lovely shot where an entrance applause sees her turn away from the audience and her face to break into a radiant grin. It’s the same buzz of feeling desired and loved that keeps her connected to the disastrous Marty.

It’s also an escape from a life comes under the domineering control of her husband, pen-magnate Milton Rockwell (a reptilian and superbly vile Kevin O’Leary). Rockwell’s selfishness and manipulation of people is far more ruthless than Marty’s naïve, childish self-focus. It’s one of a host of great supporting turns. Odessa A’zion gives Rachel a scammers natural instinct (pregnancy and all) under her genuine devotion to Marty. A’zion is terrific, genuinely confused about her own feelings for Marty, anxious but determined and as prone to self-destructive gambits as he is. Tyler Okonma is similarly excellent as his best friend constantly dragged into Marty’s dangerous, half-baked crazy schemes at high risk to himself.

Marty Supreme throws all this towards with a relentless cavalcade of energy which is often easier to respect than to really enjoy. It’s such an anxiety inducing film, both in its plot and the shooting style, that it can leave you feeling genuinely uncomfortable in your chair. Does it offer any hope for Marty? It’s ending can suggest a level of personal growth: but seeing as we have witnessed throughout the film flashes of instinctive decency from Marty that have been cast aside for his own ambitions, I wouldn’t be confident. But that discomfort is probably right for a film that’s almost trying to make you feel sweaty and uncomfortable in your chair.

Boomerang! (1947)

Effective journalistic investigation into a murder case turns into engaging courtroom melodrama

Director: Elia Kazan

Cast: Dana Andrews (State’s Attorney Henry Harvey), Jane Wyatt (Madge Harvey), Lee J Cobb (Chief Harold Robinson), Cara Williams (Irene Nelson), Arthur Kennedy (John Waldron), Sam Levene (Dave Woods), Taylor Holmes (TM Wade), Robert Keith (‘Mac’ McCreery), Ed Begley (Paul Harris), Karl Malden (Lt White)

In Bridgeport, Connecticut, a popular priest is gunned down in the street, the killer escaping into the night. The police are baffled. The city turns against the reformist mayor’s administration. Then, after several weeks, there is a lead as twitchy ex-soldier John Waldron (Arthur Kennedy) is dragged in and, after hours-and-hours of interrogation without sleep, signs a confession. But who cares about small details like that, when everyone is sure the police has their man? But State’s Attorney Henry Harvey (Dana Andrews) has doubts – and no pressure from the public or officials will make him build a case against an innocent man.

Based on an actual 1924 murder case, Boomerang! is told with journalistic sharpness by Elia Kazan that smoothly moves from investigative into courtroom drama. Boomerang! was cited by Kazan as when he started to find his voice, establishing a style that would carry him to Oscar-winning success in On the Waterfront and beyond. Shot largely in location (though admittedly in a different Connecticut town than Bridgeport), it’s full of the immediacy of the streets, avoiding sets and forced studio locations. Kazan leans into the journalistic feel, with a voiceover explaining events and an earnest attempt throughout to make it feel like we are watching real events unfold.

It captures people going about their everyday lives: gossiping over laundry, strolling down streets, pounding typewriters in press rooms, gathering in church and shops. This is a film designed to convey a full sense of a real world. That goes as well for reflecting the investigation, which is full of the visceral pounding of pavements and hustling of suspects into police cars as well as the interrogations of the worn-down Waldron, taking place in an inhospitable room where never-ending questions means Waldron’s head has to be literally picked up to continue answering the questions.

The observational strengths of the film’s opening eventually moves into something more straight-forwardly melodramatic, but Kazan’s documentary restraint tries it best to not make this shift too jarring. As Harvey’s doubts grow, he becomes under increasing pressure from officialdom, principally from Ed Begley’s sweaty Paul Harris (who is too noticeably dodgy from the start for his villainy to be anything like a surprise). This is before a series of courtroom dynamics that hue towards the sort of fireworks you find in larger-than-life films than the journalistic reserve Boomerang! starts with.

Which isn’t to say that these courtroom dynamics are not very well-handled, especially by the under-rated Dana Andrews, who brings just the right amount of humanity and dignity to an otherwise stiff-on-paper character of a crusading, too-good-to-be-true attorney. Andrews delivers the courtroom speeches, and the detailed breakdown of the flaws in the police case, with a real quiet passion – just as he brings a nice degree of moral outrage to the bullying attempts to silence him.

Boomerang! provides several opportunities for compelling character actors, many of whom went on to work again for Kazan to great success. Lee J Cobb’s bulldog fierceness is perfect for put-upon police Captain Robinson who lets his determination to prove he can crack the case compromise his judgement. Cobb gives Robinson a powerful sense of authority – there is a wonderful scene where he faces down a would-be lynch mob with little more than growling disapproval. There is also a lovely moment, where he lifts the sleeping Waldron and carries him into his bed with all the care of a loving father. He’s well backed by Karl Malden as an eager-to-please inexperienced cop.

Arthur Kennedy produces one of his expert portraits in weakness as Waldron, an embittered veteran who has found peace offers little more than failure. While never losing track of what makes Waldron suspicious, Kennedy finds a neat line in vulnerability and fear keeps him sympathetic. Opposite him, Cara Williams explodes with righteous fury as a former girlfriend who believes herself wronged, eager to see Waldron condemned. It’s a more interesting role than any other female role in the film, although Jane Wyatt finds some engaging warmth in the dull role of Andrews’ loyal wife.

Boomerang! at heart is a film about the barrel being fine, aside from a few rotten apples. The crime takes place after the old machine politics system has been cast aside by new politicians, not beholden to the system, willing to introduce reforms. And, by and large, they are shown to really mean it – even if, at one point, some express the view that it doesn’t matter if Waldron is guilty or innocent, since winning means the reformists can remain in power. But all the real sins are collected in the hands of Begley’s character: even the police are absolved, despite the fact we watch them essentially brow-beat a man into confessing (a sergeant even suggesting they rough him up a bit to speed things along, which makes you wonder what the system was like for people are not veterans the police captain feels sorry for).

Boomerang! pulls any punches of really exploring systemic flaws, even while it covers an innocent man being bum-rushed into a trial. But then it puts complete faith in the idea that the same system will turn around and do its job by ensuring he is completely absolved – with the only danger from corrupt elected officials, not the blindness of a potential system. It’s a factor Kazan (to be fair) felt the film made too many compromises on – and he’s right. It might tell a scare story, but Boomerang! is fundamentally a reassuring film that is sure everything will turn out right in the end.

The Thin Man (1934)

Complex mysteries take a backseat to witty wordplay in this charming, funny comedy

Director: W.S. Van Dyke

Cast: William Powell (Nick Charles), Myrna Loy (Nora Charles), Maureen O’Sullivan (Dorothy Wynant), Nat Pendleton (Lt John Guild), Minna Gombell (Mimi Wynant Jorgenson), Porter Hall (Herbert MacCauley), Henry Wadsworth (Tommy), William Henry (Gilbert Wynant), Harold Huber (Arthur Nunheim), Cesar Romero (Chris Jorgensen), Natalie Moorhead (Julia Woolf), Edward Ellis (Clyde Wynant)

Wealthy businessmen Wynant (Edward Ellis) is missing and his daughter Dorothy (Maureen O’Sullivan) needs someone to find him: particularly as the police suspect Wynant is a killer after his mistress Julia (Natalie Moorhead) is found dead, under suspicion of stealing $25k from him. Can she persuade debonair, playboy detective Nick Charles (William Powell) to put the martinis aside and take a break from his never-ending banter with wife Nora (Myrna Loy) to help unpick this mystery?

But of course she can, in this hugely enjoyable murder mystery. Inspired by a Dashiell Hammett novel (but you feel only loosely). In fact, Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich’s script (with the encouragement of WS Van Dyke) focused a lot less on the mystery and a lot more on the sparky interplay between Nick and Nora. The Thin Man is really a crackerjack, joke-a-minute screwball comedy with a murder loosely attached. If anything, it feels more like a comedic Agatha Christie Tommy-and-Tuppence yarn – it even has a final scene where Nick gathers the suspects together over dinner to explain exactly what happened.

Not that Nicks’ actor, William Powell, particularly followed the complex plot details. But then I’m not sure anyone making The Thin Man expected anyone else to either. For starters, most viewers came away with the impression that the debonair Powell was the title’s thin man, rather than Wynant (the original crime relied on the victim being thin) – and the producers eagerly embraced that misconception, with a host of sequels following, each titled with a twist on the thin man.

Besides, the viewers were here for the banter not the crime drama. The Thin Man was shot at a lightening pace by Van Dyke (earning his nickname “one-take Woody”) over no more than twelve days. The reason being that was the length of time Myrna Loy was available for, and her chemistry with Powell was second-to-none. And you can tell it in the film, which has a loose, improvisational quality between the two leads who are often essentially fooling around on camera with each other, pulling faces and telling off-the-cuff jokes far more than spending time actually cracking the case.

And that’s where the joy of the picture really is. It’s huge fun to see the two of them playfully mock hit each other before reverting to affectionate hugs when Lt Guild turns to look at them. Or slapstick business around an icebag to the head for a hung-over Nora. The sort of film where we spent several minutes watching Nick playfully shoot balloons off a Christmas tree with an air rifle from ridiculous positions (until he finally hits a window). Both actors capture perfectly the mood of jaunty, cocktail fuelled, archly witty fun that really powers the film, like Noel Coward goes investigating.

Both actors are at the top of their game. Powell’s casual air of permanent intoxication doesn’t dim his razor-sharp cleverness. Somehow, he manages to remain smooth and stylish, even as he pulls a parade of silly faces. It’s a hugely entertaining, charismatic performance that bounces brilliantly off Myrna Loy’s equally fine performance of arch comic skill. Like Powell, Loy matches playful silliness with sexy sensuality and a winning way with a comic line. Van Dyke encourages both of them to carry out as much natural kidding around as possible (there’s even a moment when Powell drops slightly out of frame, the camera not keeping up with his off-the-cuff japery).

The two of them are a perfect fit for a pair constantly in a state of inebriation. Nora even orders six martinis (all to be lined up) alongside Nick’s one when she finds out he’s that many drinks ahead of her. Nick’s first reaction to be woken up in the middle of the night is reaching for a drink. Despite this, the two of them are sublimely cool under fire (literally) as only Golden-era Hollywood types can be. In fact, being held at gun point in the middle of the night feels like only an inconvenience in the way of a nightcap.

In fact, what’s really striking about The Thin Man is how it shows a real marriage of equals. They may bicker at points – and Nick may joke he married Nora for her money – but they work as a fully unified team. If one has a sharp line, the other an equally sharper comeback and if they make decisions they make it as a team. And, of course, they still have the hots for each other (the film ends with a classic cutaway to them climbing into the same bunk, hammering it home with their dog Asta covering her eyes and a cut to a train steaming away on the track). No wonder audiences absolutely soaked up the energy: just years after the end of prohibition, here was a fun-loving couple all about enjoying every inch of the pleasure’s life had to offer.

The whole tone of The Thin Man is about coating murder mystery in fun. From party guests who tip into the comically ridiculous (my favourite being a melancholic businessman who keeps weeping at the Charles’ Christmas Bash because he feels he needs to call his Momma) to an over-enthusiastic dog (Asta, played by celebrity mutt Skippy) whose whims constantly butt into the Charles’ never-ending drinking, flirting and banter. I love William Henry’s Gilbert, who never moves without a large reference book and uses a parade of out-of-context terms he clearly doesn’t understand from Oedipal to thinking sexagenarian is a sex addict to mispronouncing sadist as sad-est.

With all this background colour, no wonder most people didn’t really give a damn who did the thin man in (or even who the hell the thin man was). We were here for the fun, for Powell and Loy and for the jokes and banter. With Van Dyke encouraging a freeform style from start to finish (Powell’s first scene was his first practice, unknowingly filmed, his relaxed comedy so perfect Van Dyke printed it straight away), The Thin Man is wild, entertaining and funny ride which continues to entertain as viewers try to stop giggling to work out its elaborately obscure mystery.

Z (1969)

Costa-Gravas thrilling conspiracy thriller is possibly one of the finest political films ever made

Director: Costa-Gravas

Cast: Jean-Louis Trintignant (Examining Magistrate), Yves Montand (Deputy), Irene Papas (Helene, the Deputy’s wife), Pierre Dux (General), Jacques Perrin (Photojournalist), Charles Denner (Manuel), François Périer (Public Prosecutor), Georges Géret (Nick), Bernard Fresson (Matt), Marcel Bozzuffi (Vago), Julian Guiomar (The Colonel), Gérard Darrieu (Barone), Jean Bouise (Georges Pirou), Jean-Pierre Miquel (Pierre)

Costa-Gravas Z is an explosive political thriller, ripping a lightly fictionalised story from the Greek headlines (the opening credits playfully state ‘any resemblance to real people is ‘purely intentional!’) and turning it into a compellingly angry, cold-eyed look at political repression. It was based on the state-backed murder of Greek politician Grigoris Lambrakis in 1963 and the investigation by magistrate Christos Sartzetakis which briefly looked like it might expose repressive military forces but actually kick-started a 1967 military junta counter coup in Greece. Z takes this as inspiration for a truly universal story that continues to feel like ‘it could happen here’.

Lambrakis becomes The Deputy, played with great charm and determined charisma by Yves Montand. After death threats, he is murdered after a political rally by two thugs in a hit-and-run, in a public square, surrounded by police officers and a legion of witnesses. The police, represented by the virulent anti-communist General (Pierre Dux) declare it a tragic accident. They firmly expect our Sartzetakis-figure (Jean-Louis Trintignant, putting his enigmatic unreadability to extraordinarily good-use), son of a war hero, to back-up their bullshit. But he didn’t get the memo, conducting a genuine investigation which reveals the extensive links between the military and police and far-right organisations, how they planned the hit and did everything to ensure its success. But will this investigation lead to real change?

Costa-Gravas’ film is a hard-boiled conspiracy thriller with echoes of The Battle of Algiers’ primal urgency and immediacy. It’s committed to throwing you into the middle of the turmoil, with fast-cutting, hand-held camerawork, tracking shots through crowds and shots which zero in on the faces of victims and perpetrators alike. The film’s influence on directors like Oliver Stone is palpable. But, unlike Stone’s work, Z wears its moral outrage carefully: it presents events with a journalistic matter-of-factness, trusting us to recognise the corrupt horror of over-mighty governments. The resolute professionalism of Trintignant’s magistrate helps enormously here – heroism in this world is being honest and doing your job.

What Costa-Gravas film reveals is that these authorities believe they can act with utter impunity, convinced they will never be questioned by anyone, other than their liberal targets. Z opens with a darkly comic scene that outlines this thinking: during a lecture, the pompous General outlines (to a military audience shown impassively watching in a series of quick reaction cuts) his theory of ‘ideological mildew’ attacking the ‘tree of liberty’, using a tortured pesticide metaphor to suggest it is their duty to kill the mildew (liberals and socialists). This tyrannical view is parroted by people who are neither lip-smacking villains or fiendishly clever – they just have absolute, fixed certainty.

Z makes clear that such men, placed in position of authority, will attempt to shape events with a breath-taking arrogance. The assassination plot is shockingly clumsy and obvious and cover-up so full of transparent bare-faced lies, you’d need to be impossibly arrogant to even consider you could get away with it. Copious evidence shows meetings between senior officers and members of the right-wing CROC group. It’s claimed the Deputy’s fatal head-wound came from hitting the pavement, even though this is ruled impossible by both an autopsy and hundreds of witnesses. The General claims not to know the driver who ‘rushed’ the wounded Deputy to hospital (stopping at every opportunity), even though the man is his personal chauffeur. Everyone repeats the same tortured, unusual phrases – from the head of police to the thugs themselves.

It doesn’t stop there. Once it becomes clear Trintignant’s magistrate is genuinely investigating – that he has his own mind and opinions – the clumsy cover up turns aggressive. Blame is put on the Deputies own supporters (the word ‘false-flag operation’ didn’t exist then, but the idea is seized on); his lawyer is almost killed in a park hit-and-run in front of dozens of witnesses; a witness who can testify to the plans of the hitmen is pressured, told he has epilepsy, framed as a radical (he’s clearly not) and then nearly assassinated by one of the hit-men (put up in the same military hospital with a pretend broken leg), who flees the scene and in front of his doctors, while giggling at his cheek.

Some of this is in fact blackly funny. It perhaps almost would be, if it wasn’t for Z’s moral indignation. Even without murder, this is a repressive, corrupt regime: the Deputy’s team have innumerable petty obstacles placed in their way for their rally, their supporters are openly attacked by bused in protestors mixed with baton-wielding under-cover officers. Costa-Gravas doesn’t show the Deputy as a saint – flashbacks reveal he is an adulterer – but it does make clear his bravery (confronting and cowing crowds of anti-liberal rioters, utterly unrestrained by the police), leadership and the fear he overcomes. It also shows, especially in Irene Papas’ emotionally underplayed but quietly devastating performance, the raw grief of those who love him. His closest colleagues weep at news of his death, the post-death slandering of him all-the-more disgusting.

Z presents its evidence with an increasingly overwhelming force. The magistrate corrects (for a long time) any use of the word murder for ‘accident’ – by the time he himself says ‘murder’ it’s almost easy for us to miss it, so natural has the conclusion become. Pressure is, of course, applied to him: senior officers bluster about metaphorical eggs and omelettes; his bosses suggest he charge only the hit-men and (for good measure) charge the Deputy’s people for disrupting the peace by holding the rally in the first place. Plenty of ordinary people know exactly what’s going on, but don’t want to take risks: a newspaper editor reports what he’s told to, the Deputy’s doctor regrets not joining his lonely ‘march for peace’ but, well, you know how it is…

Given the blatant criminality of the police and the army – and the sadistic arrogance of hit-man Vago (an uncomfortable beat in Z is the whiff of homophobia in the depiction of Vago as a predatory homosexual and pederast) – it’s truly triumphant to see them bought to book. Despite their bombast (each officer states he will have no choice but to take his life to avoid the shame, something of course none of them do), each flees the building railing at the press. (The General, an antisemite among everything else, even roars ‘Dreyfus was guilty!’ when a journalist compares the affair to that).

But it’s short-lived. Perhaps Irene Papas’ Helene knows it will be when she responds to news of the arrest with a quiet middle-distance stare. Z closes with a dark coda that could almost be funny if it wasn’t horrifying. A photojournalist (played by producer Jacques Perrin) who we have followed uncovering the plot, reports the aftermath: initial resignations followed by slap-on-the-wrist sentences for the hit-men, charges dropped for the officers and a coup d’etat (at this point a cut removes Perrin) which sees the arrest or ‘accidental’ death of all the Deputy’s supporters, a junta government and bans of everything from authors, mini-skirts, modern mathematics and, above all, the letter Z, as zi has been taken by protestors as the badge ‘He Lives’.

It would be funny. It almost is funny. If it wasn’t part of a system that crushes freedom with violence and murder. Costa-Gravas’ brilliant, engrossing and perfectly judged film shows how terrifyingly swiftly it can happen, how freedoms and justice can be strangled before our very eyes. Watching it today, you can’t imagine a time when it won’t be coldly, chillingly, terrifyingly relevant.

Prizzi’s Honor (1985)

Would-be satirical mafia farce, that is slow, dense and insufficiently funny to hit its target

Director: John Huston

Cast: Jack Nicholson (Charley Partanna), Kathleen Turner (Irene Walkervisks/Irene Walker/Mrs Heller), Anjelica Huston (Maerose Prizzi), Robert Loggia (Eduardo Prizzi), John Randolph (Angelo Partanna), Lee Richardson (Dominic Prizzi), Michael Lombard (Rosario Filangi), Lawrence Tierney (Lt Davey Hanley)

Charley Partanna (Jack Nicholson) is a good-natured guy, loyal to his job – which just happens to be rubbing people out for the Prizzi crime family in New York. His gentle amble through Mafia life is thrown out of whack after a parade of unlucky events, silly mistakes and random occurrences. All of these can be linked back to his falling in love with Irene Walkervisks (Kathleen Turner), a con-woman, assassin and practised liar who may-or-may-not be in love with the besotted Charley. These two find themselves in the middle of a complex Prizzi family feud, much of it built up by Charley’s former girlfriend Maerose Prizzi (Anjelica Huston). What sides will everyone pick?

John Huston’s Prizzi’s Honor was one of the first films to take Mafia tropes, all that iconography The Godfather had made so ubiquitous and try and satirise it. Adapted from Richard Condon’s novel (by Condon), it carefully recreates the style and features of Mafia films, replaying the conventions – feuds, hits, femme fatales, pay-offs – with a streak of comedy. But what it lacks is the zip and energy this sort of dark satire really needs. It’s far too stately and never quite funny enough. Instead, it’s often slow and difficult to follow – and, damningly, is most engaging when it’s most like a regular gangster film.

It feels like an old man’s film. I’d defy you to look at this and then The Asphalt Jungle and not feel Huston was lacking fire here with this frequently untense, and slow film. It opens with a hugely over-extended wedding sequence, almost twenty minutes long, which laboriously introduces the characters. It frequently fails to pick to the pace from there: too many scenes lack thrust and drive, working their way slowly towards narratively unclear purposes. Now sometimes that is because so many of the characters are lying to each other – but Prizzi’s Honor does a consistently poor job of making sure we are either aware of the real truth or that we are in full understanding of the stakes at play.

A large part of the fault is the wordy, dense screenplay from Richard Condon (how did a sharp adapter of books like Huston allow this?). It takes nearly an hour for the film to really get going with a proto gang-war initiated by Irene impulsively shooting a police captain’s wife during a botched hit. Along the way, it creates too many long conversation scenes that lack spark or wit. It’s a far too faithful an adaptation, relying far too much on telling not showing. Multiple off-screen plot developments (involving complex double cross schemes) are related to us through conversations that are (honestly) hard to follow, boring to watch and delivered and shot with a flat, functional lack of interest. All of these would have worked better with a mixture of words and visuals – seeing some of these complex events playout, with an accompanying voiceover (the sort of thing Scorsese would have done brilliantly – see Casino).

Neither script nor direction is sprightly or engaging enough. It’s languid musical score and the ambling camerawork and editing also doesn’t help. It consistently feels slow, it’s meaning fuzzy, it’s action not gripping enough, it’s jokes not funny enough. Each scene is either too over-stuffed with plot-heavy information or too light on emotional connection or purpose. I’d be surprised if many people could explain exactly how the plot mechanics worked when the credits roll which, for a film that gives over a lot of time to slowly explaining things in dense dialogue is not a good sign.

The film depends on its performers to spring into life. Best of all is Anjelica Huston’s Oscar-winning turn as Maerose, disgraced black sheep of the Prizzi family. She rips into this vampish manipulator, running rings around the other characters with her sexual power or superb play-acting (there is a great scene when she makes herself up to look depressed and miserable to win the sympathy of her dim kingpin father played by Lee Richardson). It’s a funny, engaging and dangerous performance that you wish was in the film a hell of a lot more than it is. Close behind is William Hickey, rasping with malice, as a lizardry Godfather full of greed, ambition and utterly lacking in morals, presenting a neat sideways parody of Brando-style figures.

The two leads have their moments. Jack Nicholson is surprisingly restrained as Charley, surely one of the most gentle and dim characters he’s ever played (probably the film’s best joke, since it’s JACK). Nicholson gives him a childish naivety, easy to manipulate, whether that’s Irene saying she definitely didn’t know about the Prizzi-robbing scam her late husband pulled alongside her or the rings the smarter Prizzi’s and his consiglieri father (a coldly jovial John Randolph) run round him. He’s sexually naïve – putty in the hands of Maerose (‘With the lights on?’ he asks with meek bewilderment when she invites him to a clinch in her apartment) and Irene (‘On the phone? Now?’ he asks when she suggests some sexy banter) – and, with his New Yoick accent and prominent upper lip feels like a dutiful child trusted to run errands by his parents.

Opposite him Kathleen Turner embraces the lusty femme fatale qualities that made her a star, playing a husky voiced practised liar with a ruthless heart. Prizzi’s Honor though deals Turner a tough-hand: she’s the most enigmatic character and possibly its most poorly developed, the film giving so little clarity to her inner life that part of me wonders if Turner herself was slightly confused as to her character. Even in a film where the female lead is a ruthless, murdering grifter, she’s still largely only seen in relation to the men in the film – a potentially satirical point the film doesn’t really develop at all.

Both actors give sterling performances, but so slow and artificial is the film, so laboured its pacing that I found it extremely hard to care about what was truth what was a lie. Prizzi’s Honor has small moments but it’s devoid of the energy and pace that could have made it a dark comic delight. With the lack of investment it creates in an audience, it’s frequently hard-to-follow plot developments and clumsy, unengaging exposition, even the dark ending is unlikely to make much an impact. Hugely praised at the time – partly, you feel, due to affection for its director – it’s a slow, unengaging film that only briefly sparks to life.

The Roaring Twenties (1939)

Superb gangster film, that sums up a whole era of film-making with a fast-paced grit

Director: Raoul Walsh

Cast: James Cagney (Eddie Bartlett), Priscilla Lane (Jean Sherman), Humphrey Bogart (George Hally), Gladys George (Panama Smith), Jeffrey Lynn (Lloyd Hart), Frank McHugh (Danny Green), George Meeker (Harold Masters), Paul Kelly (Nick Brown), Elizabeth Risdon (Mrs Sherman), Joseph Sawyer (Sgt Pete Jones)

Three guys fall in a foxhole, might sound like the beginning of an odd wartime joke but it’s the encounter that begins The Roaring Twenties. Framed as both a period piece, looking back to a time already a decade away from the contemporary audience, and a sort of memorial piece to a whole cycle of bootlegger gangster films. It’s also a film far too regularly overlooked when discussing that cycle: in my opinion it’s one of the finest and possibly Cagney’s most complex gangster role (with apologies to White Heat). It’s a fast-paced, hugely entertaining slice of crime drama, with fascinating, multi-faceted characters and an intriguing level of social depth.

Those three foxhole guys are Eddie Bennett (James Cagney), destined to run a bootlegging empire in Chicago; George Hally (Humphrey Bogart), destined to become his sociopathic ruthless partner; and Lloyd Hart (Jeffrey Lynn), destined to become a lawyer walking an awkward line. Returning from World War One, Eddie finds little welcome for returning servicemen, but his pluck and sense of personal loyalty eventually see him stumble into, and then embrace, the bootlegging business with glamourous hostess Panama Smith (Gladys George). Problem is danger abounds in the crime-ridden city and its impossible to work in this business without getting your hands dirty. Throw-in Eddie’s candle-holding love for the quietly uninterested Jean Sherman (Priscilla Lane) and you have a recipe for long-term disaster.

The Roaring Twenties is a punchy, well-cut, overlooked gem. From its opening montage that rolls back over newsreel from 1940 to the trenches of World War One to its closing tracking shot that culminates in Eddie’s fatal tumble on the steps of a church (as always in the gangster film, no-one escape death’s moral judgement no matter how psychologically complex they are) it’s a feast of fast-moving entertainment. Along the way Walsh throws in everything, from gun battles to musical numbers, by way of comedy, obsessive love and social commentary. The Roaring Twenties is arguably a nostalgic cocktail with a dim view of its decade: one of crime, hedonism and hypocrisy.

And it’s corrupted Eddie. This is Cagney firing on all cylinders: and it’s remarkable how skilfully he creates a complex, sympathetic character out of similar material to his despicable hood in Public Enemy or the flat-out psychopath he forged in White Heat. Eddie is in many ways a decent man who finds all the dreams he’s been clinging too are fantasies. He can’t land the mechanic job he dreamed of, his uniform is the subject of mockery, the woman he’s been corresponding with turns out to be a teenager (Cagney’s disappointment, discomfort and faint attraction when he first meets Jean Sherman’s skipping late-teens Priscilla is beautifully done). Eddie is left bumming around town desperate for any opportunity.

Cagney’s performance really works, because Eddie – even with an angry streak that means he can knock out two chucking goons with one punch – is fundamentally a decent bloke, corrupted by circumstances. He sees the liquor-brewing game as a short-term fast buck, which he stumbles into because he’s too chivalrous to allow Panama to take the wrap for a bootlegging delivery he’s made. He’s loyal to his friends and tries to solve problems amicably. He’s got a charming, barrow-boy entrepreneurship to him, brewing booze in his bath and selling it as a high-quality import. Cagney shows how desperately Eddie clings to his self-image that crime isn’t a lifestyle choice, but a short-term necessity he’ll jack in one day for the peace and quiet of running a taxi company.

But Cagney never stops letting us see the corruption soaking in: Eddie is learning to heartlessly take what he can get, to forget the consequences of his actions and when violence comes he’ll shrug off deaths as ‘not his fault’ or respond with an increasing ease viciousness (in a nice call back, he even shoves a cigar into a goons face, an echo of his famous grapefruit scene from Public Enemy). When he faces news, he doesn’t like, or is denied the things he wants, lashing out is his first option – and once he starts necking his own product, his downfall is only a matter of time as he falls prey to the sort of ‘World is Yours!’ attitude that doomed Scarface.

From grasping ever more business opportunities to grooming (in more ways that one) the now adult Priscilla into his ideal girl (he can’t watch her perform without grasping the pained hand of Panama, his eyes locked in monomania desire that he’s clearly convincing himself is a sort of pure, brotherly concern). Eddie clearly sees her as his ‘reward’ for his hardwork, a fantasy that doesn’t have any place for her liking him but not loving him. But there is a neat touch throughout The Roaring Twenties – a momentum packed film that races through years in minutes – that Eddie fundamentally isn’t ruthless enough for this game.

Certainly not compared to Humphrey Bogart’s study in shallow, selfish cruelty. Shown early on grinningly shooting a fifteen-year old German soldier in the dying minutes of the war (“He won’t be 16!”), George Hally is the monster Eddie can’t be. A guy who doesn’t care for anyone, who betrays and kills at the drop of a hat, who doesn’t stop for any sense of form and decency. For all Eddie tells George that time has moved on and people like them don’t have a place in the Thirties, Bogart’s cold-eyed George feels like the sort of man who would flourish in the era to come.

Compared to him, Eddie and Panama are romantics. Gladys George gives a fascinating performance as Panama, one of the most complex gangster dames of all. George brilliantly walks a narrow line, clearly loving Eddie but accepting he doesn’t feel the same way – and (reading between the censor lines) entering a relationship with him anyway. Panama is half-partner, half-mother to Eddie giving him a sort of matronly support and tenderness and, when his fortunes drop off a cliff in the thirties, looking after the slubby, drunken figure Eddie becomes (Cagney looks more bashed up, scruffy and pathetic in the final act than almost any other star would dare).

Fascinating character relationships like this underpin a film that feels like a summation of years of Warner Bros gangster films. Walsh’s direction is pin-point sharp, from his montage construction (including a surprisingly surreal Wall Street Crash sequence with melting buildings), through the shoot-outs. The Roaring Twenties script – by Robert Rossen and Jerry Wald among others – offers characters who are complex, flawed and don’t quite seem to realise at times how terrible their world is.

When the end comes, and Eddie’s body slumps on the steps – after an inspired, sustained tracking shot that follows his teetering bullet-ridden body, the sort of athleticism Cagney was a natural at – it seems fitting the famous closing words are “He used to be a big shot”. That sums up not only the character, but an entire era of film-making being confined (temporarily) to the dustbin of history. It’s a melancholic note to end an extraordinarily good film, one of the great gangster films, in which Cagney, Bogart and George bring life to fascinatingly complex characters.

Alibi (1929)

Early talkie as flashes of interest here-and-there as it awkwardly adapts to sound

Director: Roland West

Cast: Chester Morris (Chick Williams), Harry Stubbs (Buck Buchanan), Mae Busch (Daisy Thomas), Eleanor Griffin (Joan Manning Williams), Regis Toomey (Danny McGann), Purnell Pratt (Sergeant Pete Manning), Irma Harrison (Toots)

After a long stretch, Chick Williams (Chester Morris) is finally out of the slammer – and he’s celebrating by getting married to Joan Manning (Eleanor Griffin), who just happens to be the daughter of Police Sergeant Pete Mannings (Purnell Pratt). But it’s all fine, because Chick is going straight. And when the police are convinced Chick killed a police officer during a bungled burglary, Joan is certain he didn’t. In fact, she can give him a cast iron alibi – they were at the theatre together and, even if the killing did happen when they were separated during the interval, he definitely didn’t do it. Or did he?

Alibi (an early nominee for Best Picture) is another classic example of both Hollywood adapting a melodramatic Broadway murder-drama hit to the screen and a silent film hurriedly (and sometimes awkwardly) retrofitted to sound. It makes it a strange beast, a hodgepodge of different acting styles with scenes ranging from dynamic and experimental camera movement with flashes of intriguing sound usage to painfully awkward dialogue scenes where most of the actors stand very still and enunciate very slowly and clearly to make sure the mics pick up every word.

We get an explosion of sound at the start – films of this era knew audiences were gripped by such humdrum audio marvels as prisoners marching out of cells, bells ringing and police rhythmically tapping nightsticks against a wall. West does shoot this with quite a bit of interest – in particular the sudden appearance of the prisoners from behind a row of doors that swing shut. It’s handsomely designed by William Cameron Menzies and there are the odd moments of flair: a camera that tracks from a low-angle into the hotel Chick and his associates use for their base of operations; a stool pigeon crumbling into panic with a nightmare vision of his interrogator’s heads swirling around him; a drunk leaning in towards a massive bottle in close-up; shadows are cast behind doors; there are some dynamic fights and punches and an impressive rooftop flight.

But it’s mixed with some painfully stilted dialogue scenes, with most of the cast shown up in a bad light. Scenes involving Sergeant Manning and his police cronies seem to take hours as the actors trudge painfully slowly through the dialogue, their voices at time sounding like the film has been caught in a projector reel. You really notice the difference when the actors do something silently, their bodies moving with a swift confidence they lose as soon as they speak. Several actors – most notably Eleanor Griffin – still rely on tried-and-trusted silent reactions, signposting reactions they are also communicating with dialogue.

It stands out when the film does use dialogue well. The stool pigeon interrogation sees the interrogators repeat “Who killed O’Brien” and “Come on, come on” over and over again with an increasing rhythmic pace which really captures the mood of relentless interrogation. A scene involving a police switchboard sees a line of operators all speaking, but each sentence we catch forms a coherent narrative whole. There are some relatively ambitious song and dance numbers in Chick’s club. It’s just a shame so many of the core dialogue sequences are so dire.

Alibi does throw in a few decent twists here and there. Today we are not a jot surprised that Chick is in fact a villain, but the film manages to play its cards fairly close to its twist. That’s largely due to Chester Morris’ (an Oscar nominee) very effective performance, easily the finest in the film. Morris has the air of a cocky James Stewart, a false small-town bonhomie covering his greed and arrogance. He plays the humble suitor well – but his smug grin to Sergeant Manning when Joan reaffirms her complete faith in Chick is a great insight to who he is. He’s also a bully and, it transpires, a complete coward – Morris nails a great breakdown scene late in the film where his assurance disappears in a cloud of begging.

Morris is probably slightly better than much of the film deserves. He’s also luckier than Regis Toomey, whose ‘drunken acting’ as booze-hound criminal (truly some of the worst bits of alcoholic acting I’ve ever seen) is still not really excusable, even when you find out it’s a double bluff on his character’s part. (It’s so awful I’m amazed anyone is fooled). Toomey is also the centre of a death scene so ridiculously overblown, maudlin and sentimental it’s far more likely to illicit laughs than tears today as it stretches out over almost five minutes of screentime.

There is the odd intriguing idea in Alibi. It’s remarkable how critical of the police it is – even if it defaults to framing them as heroes in the end. Joan tells her father she could never marry the copper suitor he favours, because she believes cops to be corrupt bullies. An idea you can see partially borne out when our stool pigeon is made to put his fingerprints on a gun and threatened with judicial fake-self-defence murder unless he confesses. Bullets are fired freely at criminals, who left alone to be roughed up and threatened when arrested. It’s not exactly the most flattering view of law enforcement, who (despite reverting to heroes at the end) are constantly shown to be willing to bend the word of the law.

These moments of interest just about sustain it, added to Morris and West’s touches of flair. But it’s also got some painfully dated, awkward moments as Hollywood still struggled to stumble from silence to sound.