- James Cagney's Cody Jarrett is one of the more memorable gangsters ever to tear apart the silver screen. Primed to explode, he's an unstable mixture of intelligence, brutality, and insanity, tempered only by the presence of his ever-loving Ma (Margaret Wycherly). We first encounter Cody as the ringleader of a train robbery that quickly escalates into a bloodbath. Although he and his gang remain holed up for a while, it isn't long before the police are hot on their trail. In lieu of getting a quick trip to the gas chamber, Cody confesses to an alternate crime he didn't commit and gets thrown in jail for a few years. Unbeknownst to him, however, undercover officer Hank Fallon (Edmond O'Brien) has been planted in the jail as a mole to discover what Cody has done with the stolen money.
- Although Cody thinks he's fooled the authorities, being incarcerated only multiplies his problems. First, Jarrett gang member "Big" Ed Somers (Steve Cochran) moves in on Cody's willing wife Verna (Virginia Mayo) as Ma Jarrett looks on. Then, partly at Verna's behest, Big Ed attempts to have Cody killed in jail, an attempt that would have succeeded but for the intervention of agent Fallon. Unfortunately for Big Ed and the would-be assassin, Cody is not the sort of man you shoot at and miss. As Cody and Fallon plan a staged jailbreak, however, Cody receives the news that his dear mother is dead. This pushes the already precarious crook completely over the edge, and he violently busts out of jail with mayhem on his mind. After enacting some revenge ("I'll give ya a little air!"), Cody finally sets his sights on a Trojan Horse caper that famously culminates in an explosive confrontation with the police.
- White Heat would probably be a decent gangster picture regardless, but it is obviously Cody Jarrett who elevates the film to, in the character's words, "the top of the world." While Cagney is always reliable, he channels an impressive intensity in this film that is unmatched in his other work. When Jarrett has one of his attacks, for instance, you can practically feel the buzzsaws drilling in his head. The director, Raoul Walsh, and the film's writers also deserve a lot of credit for portraying Cody's relationship with his mother with just the right amount of strangeness. Lines like "Verna? All I ever had was Ma" tell us everything we need to know about the Jarrett family, I think. There's no better way to conclude a review than with the film's last lines: "He finally got to the top of the world... and it blew right up in his face."
