Wonderfully offbeat film!

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Don't let the overly sensationalized title put you off of this one, which is about a gang of young toughs all sentenced to a reform school, where they suffer mistreatment until James Cagney improbably shows up to run the show. Cagney befriends the nurse (Madge Evans), but clashes with the strict warden (Dudley Digges), who does not approve of their ideas to give the kids more freedom and the chance to govern themselves. Cagney has further trouble in that he's a gangster himself, trying to keep his 'racket' under control while he spends time at the school.Cagney has such charisma and his presence carries the movie, but there are also fine performances from Frankie Darro (the leader of the kids), Digges, and Arthur Byron (a thoughtful judge), among others (and including all those child actors). It's fun to hear all the 'tough talk' and slang from the 30's, and the scenes early on with the kids are enjoyable. The film's message, to paraphrase Cagney's character, is that you have to take a firm hand with kids or they'll walk all over you, but on the other hand, they're just kids, and behave better when shown a little love and respect. The action gets a little melodramatic as the film progresses, and the simplistic and somewhat horrifying ending isn't great, but all in all it's an entertaining film.

Racketeer James Cagney takes over a reform school that's being run like a prison. With help from pretty nurse Madge Evans, he turns the place around and helps the boys get back on the right track. But the scummy guy that used to run the school is determined to destroy all the good work they've done, no matter what harm it does to the kids.Intense, gritty drama that tackles the issue of juvenile crime and how to deal with it. Strong writing with some good characters. Cagney's excellent in one of his best and probably most underrated films. The kid actors are all terrific and believable. Dudley Digges is a particularly evil villain. Backed up by a typically solid WB stable of supporting actors. Jaw-dropping climax is one of the best finishes to any movie of this decade. Remade as Crime School, with Humphrey Bogart and the Dead End Kids. That one's not bad but it's not nearly as powerful as this one.

Another excellent Cagney movie, although, honestly, he's not the main character in this one. He's an important secondary character, though, and he was top billed. The protagonists of the picture are a bunch of kids from the slums (lead by Frankie Darro, who played Cagney as a child in The Public Enemy). During a petty robbery, one of their victims ends up seriously hurt (or dead, maybe, I don't remember) and they get carted to a reform school, controlled by a nasty warden (Dudley Digges). Madge Evans plays a sympathetic nurse and Cagney is a gangster who has risen up in the realm of politics. Cagney and Evans want to change the awful conditions and empower the kids by creating a sort of government amongst the prisoners (electing Darro "mayor", thus the title). Soon Cagney's gangster past catches up to him and he disappears for a while. At this point, Digges fights back against the kids and makes their existence even more horrible, which leads to a good old fashioned prison riot. It's a social issues movie, kind of in the same genre as the same year's exceptional Wild Boys of the Road (i.e., the pains of being a kid during the Depression), and it's actually rather involving. It helps a lot that Darro and the other kids are fairly good actors, unlike so many child actors of the time. They sure blow the pants off the Dead End Kids, and I'd rank the film a safe distance above the far more famous Angels with Dirty Faces.

I finally saw this movie (One of the few Cagney films I never saw (I wish they would show "The Millionaire" or "Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye" on TCM or release it on DVD)). There is nothing about this film that I did not like: Dudley Diggs, Madge Evans, Allen Jenkins, and of course Cagney, are outstanding. I know there are some people who prefer "Crime School" because of the "Dead End Kids" (Jordan, Gorcey & Hall), and Bogart. But as great as Bogart was, he could not compare to Cagney, and Mr. Thompson had to be one of the most disgusting and cowardly villains you will find in a motion picture (I think of Kent Marlowe (Robert Montgomery) in "The Big House" who accidentally kills someone, and can't stand up and take his punishment like a man)). This would be on my list of the top 10 Cagney films EVER: The others? "Taxi", "The Roaring Twenties", "White Heat", "City For Conquest", "Frisco Kid" (Highly Underrated and better than Robinson's "Barbary Coast", "Pitcher Snatcher", "The Public Enemy", "Angels With Dirty Faces", and my personal favorite "Each Dawn I Die"