2/18/2021

G Men (1935) - Uninteresting action puff-piece for the modern lawmen

 

You nearly put your hands up out of sheer self-protective reflex looking at this intense and beautifully painted, elongated poster for William Keighley's G Men


A lawyer with morals gets headhunted to the newly created Federal Bureau of Investigation, where he becomes unpopular as a 'G' Man, who hunts the country's border-crossing criminals.

 

G Men is written by Seton I. Miller (Calcutta (1946)) and directed by William Keighley (The Match King (1932)).

James Cagney (The Strawberry Blonde (1941)) applies himself as the Government Man hero, (that's what the G stands for), but the film is beneath his talents. It is a standard shoot-em-up, designed as one long PR push for the FBI. The shoot-outs are long and deafening.

G Men is a minor film among the many greats from Warner Brothers in the 1930s.

 

Related post:

 

William KeighleyThe Fighting 69th (1940) - Cagney and O'Brien back in familiar dynamic in alright morale war picture

 



Watch 2 minutes from the film here

 

Cost: 307k $

Box office: 1.9 mil. $

= Huge hit (returned 6.18 times its cost)

[G Men premiered 18 April (USA) and runs 85 minutes. Warner Bros. produced the film to counteract growing criticism that their popular gangster movies glorified gangsters. Shooting took place in California. The film grossed 1.1 mil. $ (57.9 % of the total gross) in North America, where it was among the year's highest-grossing films. It was nominated for the Best Original Story Oscar, lost to The Scoundrel. Keighley returned with Mary Jane's Pa (1935). Cagney returned in The Irish in Us (1935). 3,560 IMDb users have given G Men a 7.2/10 average rating.]

 

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