Oh no! Grocers, butchers, gas stations and other merchants are shafting customers! That five pounds of sugar you bought? It’s actually only four and a quarter pounds! Organized crime is running a racket. Who’s going to do something about this situation? Why, Johnny Cave (James Cagney), Chief Deputy of the City Department of Weights and Measures! That’s who! He’s a wise-cracking, no-nonsense, ex-boxer and these crooks don’t stand a chance against his dogged determination and eagle eye for scams. Bribes? He won’t take them. Protection money? Forget about it. Offer him a high paying job to get him out of Weights and Measures? Nope. Hell, you can beat him up, kidnap him and hold him for ransom and he won’t bend an inch. Great Guy gives an interesting take on Cagney’s typical tough gangster role. He’s a squeaky clean good (great!) guy who uses his brash, confrontational and often violent approach for good, not evil. This causes conflict with corrupt politician Marty Cavanaugh (Robert Gleckler), sleazy business man Abel Canning (Henry Kolker) who’s ripping off an orphanage no less and Canning’s secretary Janet Henry (Mae Clarke), who happens to be Johnny’s fiancée. The screenplay is lively and the performances are all above average. Cagney seems to be having a lot of fun with his role (he made two films in this part of his career independently of his usual Warner Bros contract) and Mae Clarke is a good match for him. The runtime is just 66 minutes so it never has a chance to get long-winded or boring. Definitely worth watching, especially for fans of James Cagney.
Cagney playing a good guy (indeed a 'great guy') for a change on his break from Warner Bros. This quickie, produced by the small Grand National studio, sees him as an ex-boxer turned investigator for the New York Bureau of Weights and Measures!Which turns out to be one of the most dangerous jobs in the city, where every criminal is trying to rip off the poor housewives of New York. He's also engaged to Mae Clarke, but when he finds out her boss is under-delivering and overcharging a local orphanage, he goes after him - which puts a strain on their relationship.Our Jimmy is as good value as he always was but the picture strains under the weight of a weak story. Mind you, the Public Domain copy I watched is missing 10 minutes, so that may be the explanation for the holes in the plot.Watched on YouTube - www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbpL2lsa50A
The idea of Hollywood karmic debt amuses me. After plenty of moral finger-wagging following the success of gangster pictures like The Public Enemy, studios felt the need to put out counterpoints, portraying former villain actors as crusading crime fighters in order to restore the balance of the universe. James Cagney was a part of this effort at safeguarding the thin barrier between order and movie-induced lawlessness, of which Great Guy is a part. Personally, I can't wait until Joaquin Phoenix's follow-up role to Joker, "Fantastic Gentleman Who's Appropriately Sensitive and Remembers Birthdays." Goofing aside, it warms my withered, black bureaucrat's heart to see an inspector from a municipal Department of Weights and Measures, of all things, become an ironclad opponent of corruption and organized crime. Cagney, with his perfect goon's face, is a pugnacious defender this time of the public interest, going so far as to punch the lights out of those who would dare to chisel customers out of misallocated shares of roasting chickens, sugar, and gasoline. Imagine that, a hero who enforces the fair distribution of resources, against all pressure from the Governor on down. For all of this film's silliness, and there's a lot of it, I must salute someone making a film with a character like this as its main man. Beyond that, this isn't much more than a bog standard light noir potboiler, as Cagney discovers a weights-and-measures oriented conspiracy on the part of the city banker to stiff orphanages and old ladies on deliveries of bread, and runs afoul of corrupt government officials and their mobbed up goons. There's more than a hint of gaelsploitation going on in the background; a tall-talking Irish immigrant serves as Cagney's sidekick and comic relief, and Cagney himself is said to want to fight everyone because he's of Irish descent. No one needs to call Warwick Davis just quite yet here, but it's something of a weird relic of old-timey ethnocomedy. Fare for the Cagney completionist or those of us with an interest in seeing low-level government functionaries kick ass for proper administrative oversight, and not much else.
