Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
Directed by Michael Curtiz
Childhood chums Rocky Sullivan and Jerry Connelly grow up on opposite sides of the fence: Rocky matures into a prominent gangster, while Jerry becomes a priest, tending to the needs of his old tenement neighborhood.
7 connections found
View:
7 connections, in both directions
What critics compared Angels with Dirty Faces to
Mason delivers a sterling performance as the suffering fugitive, trying to reach safety even as he suspects his time is almost at an end — it's an especially interesting turn because his character is too often in pain to even grasp the actions of those around him, among them a pair of helpful nurses, a neutral bartender and groups of children play-acting as Johnny and the cops (their admiration recalls that of the Dead End Kids for James Cagney's Rocky Sullivan in 1938's Angels with Dirty Faces).
Likewise, gangster Jimmy Cagney upstaged Pat O’Brien’s streetwise priest in Angels with Dirty Faces , but there at least some attempt was made to redeem Cagney’s character.
Moviegoers rooted for villains like James Cagney in White Heat and Angels with Dirty Faces, but Al Pacino’s performance as Michael Corleone goes far darker places.
Moviegoers rooted for villains like James Cagney in White Heat and Angels with Dirty Faces, but Al Pacino’s performance as Michael Corleone goes far darker places.
Advertisement
We Own The Night employs one of the oldest and most melodramatic chestnuts of the crime genre -- friends/siblings who find themselves on opposite sides of the law -- which has been done in everything from Angels With Dirty Faces to the current Showtime series Brotherhood.
As is the case in such films at least since Angels with Dirty Faces, the boy from the neighborhood who goes wrong is balanced out by one who goes right.
Screenwriters Adam Cooper & Bill Collage and Jeffrey Caine and Steven Zaillian set up an unfortunately anemic Angels with Dirty Faces "dynamic" between Moses and stepbrother Ramses (Joel Edgerton): raised alongside each other, they’re nevertheless destined to wind up on opposite sides of the chariot tracks.