Warner Bros. Pictures Gangsters Collection

Perfection is notoriously difficult to achieve, but we can find no room for improvement in Warner Home Video's collection of vintage gangster movies from Hollywood's Golden Age. Indeed, the six films included in this handsomely designed boxed set collectively represent the pinnacle of the genre (all but one were made during or shortly after Prohibition and the accompanying growth of organized crime in America, and they reflect their times with surprising accuracy). Warner Brothers was always known for its tough, gritty crime thrillers, just as MGM was for its musicals and Universal for its horror movies. Little Caesar (1930), the first gangster film of the talkie era, made a star of Edward G. Robinson and established the rise-and-fall motif employed in most of the genre's offerings. The Public Enemy (1931) was, if anything, even tougher (this is the movie with the iconic scene in which charismatic bootlegger James Cagney smacks leading lady Mae Clarke in the face with a grapefruit), presenting a vicious and uncompromising portrait that upped the ante for future films of its type. The Petrified Forest (1936), based on a Broadway play, was somewhat more genteel but notable for the riveting, star-making turn by Humphrey Bogart as Duke Mantee, one of the silver screen's most memorable triggermen. Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), which teamed Cagney with Bogart and threw in Pat O'Brien and the Dead End Kids for good measure, remains the quintessential Warner gangster movie; often imitated and even more often parodied, it contains all the characters and conventions most viewers equate with urban-based shoot-‘em-ups. The Roaring Twenties (1939) also shines the spotlight on Cagney, here marginally sympathetic as a World War I veteran who turns to crime only after failing to succeed “on the level.” Bogie appears as his bete noire yet again, and the erstwhile public enemy meets his end in another memorable denouement (with a classic curtain line delivered as a eulogy by leading lady Gladys George). Rounding out the set is White Heat (1949), the film that rung down the curtain on old-school Hollywood gangsters, featuring Cagney's feverishly intense portrayal of a psychopathic hoodlum with a mother fixation. There were, of course, other gangster movies from 1930-1949, both from Warner and the other studios, but none would have the larger-than-life qualities of the six films collected here. Presented with sharp restored transfers, DVD extras include commentaries, featurettes, and a Leonard Maltin "Warner Night at the Movies" (newsreel, short, cartoon, etc.) section on all six titles. Highly recommended. (E. Hulse)