James Cagney gives an astounding, realistic, terrific portrayal of a gangster as menacing and as ruthless as any ever played on the screen as the star of White Heat.

| Apr 23, 2024

White Heat, made by Warners, under Raoul Walsh's direction and suggested by a Virginia Kellogg story, is a highly exciting cops and robbers melodrama. One scene of violence follows another, until the thrilling climax.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 23, 2024

Here's a taut crime melodrama, with punch and pace, which is very, likely to start a whole new cycle of such pictures... it looks like Director Raoul Walsh and the practiced Mr. Cagney have put the public enemy back in business again.

| Apr 23, 2024

A rousing reminder of the gory old gangster period (celluloid variety) in which Jimmy and his bosses gave fans their money's worth of chills and excitement.

| Apr 23, 2024

White Heat is cunningly tooled for maximum shock effect.

| Apr 23, 2024

Cagney aside (which isn’t so easy, since he’s the star of this movie), [White Heat is engrossing and at times exciting. I found particularly interesting the use made of electronics by the Los Angeles cops in tracking criminals.

| Apr 23, 2024

Warner Brothers weren't kidding when they put the title "White Heat" on the new James Cagney picture... For the simple fact is that Mr. Cagney has made his return to a gangster role in one of the most explosive pictures that he or anyone has ever played.

| Apr 22, 2024

White Heat is one of those things that Hollywood does superbly.

| Apr 22, 2024

The tight-lipped scowl, the hunched shoulders that rear themselves for the kill, the gargoyle speech, the belching gunfire of a trigger-happy paranoiac... these are the standard and still-popular ingredients that constitute the James Cagney of White Heat.

| Apr 22, 2024

Margaret Wycherly steals the honors as Ma Jarrett. Of greatest interest are the complicated devices and crime-solving techniques which can locate a car, tail it unsuspectedly, and nab the evildoers all by electronics.

| Apr 22, 2024

It sparks some pretty exciting stuff.

| Apr 22, 2024

This is crime melodrama at its best- -- a train robbery a prison break, and the holdup of a chemical plant, complete with explosions and police.

| Apr 22, 2024

White Heat scorches with action in which Cagney and Miss Wycherly make searing impressions.

| Apr 22, 2024

Cagney, the monster's most cheeky head, gives a superb performance, throwing himself into the role without reserve, and reaping more glory in defeat than all the screen policemen have ever gained in all their victories.

| Apr 22, 2024

Mr. Cagney is never less than an actor of extreme competence who knows precisely what he is doing; the trouble is that this particular part is one he knows too well.

| Apr 22, 2024

Rarely was a crime film so full of ingenious devices for catching the criminal.

| Apr 22, 2024

It wasn’t quite so likely that White Heat would turn out to be as surcharged with excitement as the gangster films of the early ’30s and that Cagney’s realization of a psychopathic killer would surpass in realism and intensity anything he has ever done.

| Apr 15, 2024

It's so primitive and outrageous in its flamboyance that it seems to have been made much earlier than it was. But this flamboyance is also what makes some of its scenes stay with you.

| Apr 15, 2024

James Cagney gives an electrifying performance as a psychotic and paranoiac-mama's boy in White Heat. The 1949 film is undoubtedly one of the most terrifying and violent crime films ever made.

| Apr 15, 2024

A gangster classic.

| Nov 17, 2011