TAXI!
James Cagney & Guy Kibbee,
Loretta Young, David Landau, Matt McHugh.
Dir: Roy Del Ruth, 1931, Warner Bros.

SYNOPSIS:
If you forget about the plot, this movie is fantastic. It has attitude, flavour, laugh-out-loud comedy, action and genuinely touching portrayals of relationships. There're no cops and robbers, just people on the skids, some are bad, some are trying to be good and one of them is the indefatigable Cagney.

"From my taxi I had to fire two shots out of the window and duck; then a machine gun would cut loose and take the window out over my head. The scene was played as called for with one exception: one of the machine gun bullets hit one of the spikes holding the backing planks together. It ricocheted and went tearing through the set, smacked through a sound booth, ripped across the stage, hit a clothes tree and dropped into the pocket of someone's coat. I was young enough not to consider this a pretty dangerous activity."
- Jimmy Cagney.

REVIEWS:
"A sordid but amusing observation on minor metropolitan endeavours."
- Time.
"As a deese, dem and dose, chip-on-the-shoulder, on-the-make example of young America the audience knows no better interpretation on the screen than that which Cagney gives it. The populace are now expectant of this player socking all and sundry including all the women in the cast."
- Variety.