Trying to broaden my horizons, I landed on ‘Angels with Dirty Faces’ and what I was led to believe was going to be something of a gangster turn redemption movie…and it is *KIND* of like that…but not in the way I envisioned it.

The film follows Rocky Sullivan, and in the opening of the film him and his friend Jerry are nogoodnicks looking for good times and easy living, when they jump a boxcar heading to Florida, looking to escape the winter cold and enjoy some swimming, they end up being found by the cops and they decide to make a break for it, Jerry gets away, but Rocky isnt so lucky. While awaiting trial, Jerry suggests he should come forward and tell the cops he was involved as well, but Rocky advises him to keep quiet, because Jerry putting himself in the mess wont make either of their stints in Juvie any easier.

Jerry agrees and the two young mens lives divert tremendously, Rocky goes to jail, and spends the next 10 years or so offending and reoffending, building a small empire. with his last heist earning him 100 grand he has stored with his lawyer.

Jerry meanwhile gave up the low level life of crime and joined the clergy, eventually becoming the priest of his community.

When Rocky ends his latest stint he returns to his home town looking to reconnect, and get his money back. Jerry welcomes him with open arms, and brings him up to date about his saintly ways, especially with his work with the kids of the community. Rocky cant quite believe it, but hangs out with Jerry for a while to get a feel of whats changed in the area…However; it doesnt take long for Rocky to get back up to his old ways, and when a small gang of kids run into Rocky, hanging out and causing trouble in his old stomping ground, He decides to recruit the kids as part of a new racket. leading to confrontations with Jerry over Rocky bringing hard core crime to a community that has enough problems of its own.

I’ll be honest; going into this film I had preset expectations, which is THE worst thing a critic can have when going into a movie. *I* was under the impression that the core plot of this was going to be some kind of gangster thriller, in which Rocky returns to his community, meets Jerry, and while trying to look good in front of Jerry, he’d be secretly grooming the kids in Jerrys care to do bigger scale heists than their usual fruit stealing gigs. With Rocky having a question of morality as to whether this is the life he’d want to go to, and him and Jerry having to stop the kids when they get too big for Rocky to handle alone.

That isnt what this film is, what this film is is about 10 minutes of solid opening set up establishing Rocky, Jerry and the evolving neighbourhood, and then about 45 minutes of exposition between Rocky and his lawyer, Jerry and some other bad guys who want to do a heist with him. The kids Rocky works with get maybe 20 minutes of the movie, and dont really do much. If memory serves they pull of one heist for Rocky, get paid handsomely and then they kind of dissapear barring for comic relief. and it isnt really until 15 minutes off the end that the more actioney-Gangstery type stuff I was expecting the whole movie to be finally came into it, at which point it was so rushed and heavy handed I couldnt really enjoy it.

The pacing is fine enough here, but around the middle it bloats as we end up in extended moralistic conversations, and while the dialogue is really decent and quite naturalistic for the time, I struggled with the fast paced nature of it all and ultimately had to swap to subtitles to really figure out exactly what was happening.

The tones nice enough, its a gritty crime film, with some lighter moments, theres a gentle sprinkle of comedy through the runtime, which I felt added a nice contrast to things really…But again, because I was expecting something a bit more shooty bang bang and less criminals discussing finances, I did find myself drumming my fingers at times…

The characters are all solid, though the kids are a little too ‘theater’ for me, that isnt surprisng however, as ‘The Deadend Kids’ were all theater performers and this was their first feature outing. Rocky and Jerrys relationship is handled well, and I like the fact we do get a bit more depth to the characters via flashbacks and remenising as that helps bed in that these people had lives and a bit more complexity than say, had the film just opened with Rocky getting out of jail.

The direction and cine is solid enough, especially for the time, i’d go as far as to say its exemplary. with some interesting use of cross fading and some fantastic chiascuro work giving this a nice noir-esq finish. sequences are well put together. But, as i’ve found with a lot of these older movies, I feel like the picture could have been 10 minutes shorter, and more about showing rather than telling, and it could have been significantly better…However, I accept that this films a bit of a victim of its time.

The performances are solid, with James cagney as Rocky basically stealing the show in a highly memorable and rock solid physical performance, his closing moments at the end of the film were genuine to the point of haunting, and thats probably going to be the most memorable aspect of this for me truthfully.

I can understand why some would consider this a classic, and I can see this is clearly a very well made production, but having seen it now, I dont feel like this was really my kind of rodeo. It definitely had its moments, and I have no regrets checking it out. But I think it may be better recieved in a future rewatch now that I know what its about, especially when im in the right headspace, than it was when I watched it today.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/angels-with-dirty-faces/