SmugKitZine Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

Supelice Dreadfully Boring

Tacticalin An absolute waste of money

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

berfedd Plot: James Cagney, as a trading standards officer, finds himself treading on just about everybody's toes in his efforts to beat corruption.Review: Not a particularly polished production, but James Cagney is entertainingly watchable as a 'weights and measures' officer with a penchant for annoying the wrong people and making use of his fists when he can't think of anything better to do.There are other entertaining characters as well as the generic bad guys. James Burke stands out as a new recruit with the gift of the blarney, managing to effortlessly chat up Cagney's secretary and every other girl he meets. Joe Swayer as an old sparring partner of Cagney's also makes a good impression (and turns up in The Grapes of Wrath). There's not really a lot else to say, as this is ultimately a bit of a throw away movie, but there's a lot worse out there.www.thebestmovieof.com

Theo Robertson James Cagney is one of the icons of the 20th Century . It's difficult to mention Classic Hollywood of the 1930s without mentioning James Cagney . He was a movie star rather than an actor who'd always be playing a magnetic anti-hero . In this 1936 film GREAT GUY he plays a stand-up hero called Johnny Cave in the Weights And Measures Department taking on corrupt politicians at City Hall The premise is utterly laughable . Johnny is good at his job as he exposes shop owners trying to rip off consumers by adding small weights to food products via sleight of hand . Laughable that is until to stop to think that prohibition had not long ended and mobsters were needing another market to break in to . Let's not also forget these dreadful action adventure from the 1990s films where Steven Seagal plays an eco-warrior dedicated to peace and harmony where he kills thousands of bad guys because they work for say an oil company . Certainly Cagney has a far more likable screen persona than Seagal And to enjoy GREAT GUY you have to turn off your brain and concentrate on the star power of a screen legend whose risking everything in life and life itself in order to protect you the innocent consumer . It's also interesting how much this film mirrors the later and superior Cagney star vehicle EACH DAWN I DIE

timothymcclenaghan This film has a stupid plot--merchant corruption policed by the Bureau of Weights & Measures, with related political corruption. If they wanted a movie about fighting corruption, there were plenty of other more interesting areas to explore.The script writers didn't give Cagney much to work with. He plays his stereotypical Irishman, and does his usual knocking people around.Did anyone else notice that Mae Clarke gets a little revenge against Cagney for his shoving a grapefruit in her face in Public Enemy? This time she plays a p-whipping shrew fiancée, with Cagney playing submissive and caving in to her.This movie may not have been officially a "B" movie since it probably didn't play second to another feature at the time, but it sure falls into that category in terms of quality.

classicsoncall Five years after she teamed up with James Cagney in "The Public Enemy", Mae Clarke makes another appearance, this time as his fiancée with Cagney's character on the other side of the law. It seems like she was calling more of the shots in their relationship as well, trying to get Johnny Cave to be a little more practical with his money and his career. You had to figure they'd get back together after she gave him the boot for challenging her crooked boss; those things have a way of working out in pictures.I got a kick out of watching Cagney in this one. I usually do, and here he looked like he might have auditioned that characteristic shoulder shrug move that he used to good effect in "Angels With Dirty Faces" portraying Rocky Sullivan. It was right after he threw Cavanaugh (Robert Gleckler) out of his office during the first attempt at bribing the new Weights and Measures boss. He turns to the camera and hitches up as if entirely pleased with his response to the crook - very cool.It's my understanding that this wasn't one of Cagney's Warner films, but it might as well have been. Warner's often took up the cause for the common man, and the expose of crooked merchants and the politicians who protected them would have been right up their alley. You also have those great New York City street scenes depicting cars and shops of the era, with home made signs pricing flour at eighteen cents a pound. Hey, how about the furniture store selling the living room set for a hundred eighty nine dollars, you might get a single stick chair for that price today.Best part of the picture just might be that meat counter scene when Cagney, James Burke (Aloysius) and the butchers play catch with an underweight chicken. One of the film's lighter moments, but you get an idea how tense people can get when they're caught cheating. Same with the truck driver who's pressured by Johnny into signing for an accurate delivery; he just wasn't used to doing that.All in all, a nice diversion from Cagney's more typical gangster presence, even if not up to the standard of his feature films. It's easy enough to obtain as one of a handful of public domain Cagney pictures out there, and often found in relatively inexpensive compilations.