Quick recap: Bart Tare is into guns. Like, really into guns. But not in that way (killing people). His wife on the other hand is totally into guns AND killing people. I guess you could say they are………gun crazy!

Fun (?) fact: During the credits it says that the script was written by MacKinlay Kantor and Millard Kaufman. In reality, there was no Kaufman, but instead a guy named Dalton Trumbo, who was blacklisted at the time.

dude REALLY loves his guns. Can’t say that enough

My thoughts: With all of the talk on gun control and me being a crazy person who thinks not everyone should have all the guns, I wasn’t expecting much from this movie. The late 40s/early 50s were a different time when guns were used mostly for recreation and not terrifying mass murders, so a young boy with a fascination with guns didn’t really register with people that this was alarming. Case in point, the very beginning of the movie has a young Bart break into a hardware store to steal a gun. The reason he stole it was because his mean old teacher took away his other gun when he was showing it off to the class. That was the punishment, by the way- bring a gun to school and it will get taken away……and that’s about it.

The director went out of his way to show that Bart was a sweet kid (I know this because he guns down a chicken in a flashback scene and then cries about it. Aww.) and it wasn’t guns that made him violent. Instead, what caused his crime spree was all the woman’s doing. Annie Laurie Starr is the Bonnie to Bart’s Clyde and from the very beginning of their relationship, it’s pretty obvious that the reason Bart loved guns so much was because he really wasn’t all that bright. He is told on several occasions that this woman was no good and yet he couldn’t resist her. She talks him into robbing every chance they get, which is bad enough, but then (according to her), Starr has this habit of getting nervous and killing people. This, understandably, gets the two of them into trouble with the law until they are finally cornered and must surrender. In one of the more beautiful moments of the film, Bart, who hasn’t killed anyone or anything since that chicken, turns the gun on his wife, who was about to shoot his friends. Gunfire is returned and Bart is also killed. The final shot is of them in the marsh, their dead bodies lying slumped against each other.

It might be the ridiculousness of the plot or how ‘B-movie’ certain scenes felt, but I really enjoyed Gun Crazy. It was a lot of fun and didn’t take itself too seriously. I kept expecting some larger discussion about guns, but really, it just came down to an idiot in love with a woman who kills.

Final review: 4/5

Up next: Little Big Man

Quick recap: A gangster with mommy issues gets outgangstered. Totally a thing. Look it up.

Nothing weird going on here!

Fun (?) fact: In between takes for White Heat, James Cagney liked to go up to co-star Edmond O’Brien and show him poetry he had written.

My thoughts:  Knowing that this was a gangster film, I was expecting violence but it being the 1940s, I wasn’t expecting anything super realistic. I was right in a way because the deaths were your typical ‘clutch the chest, fall over’ fare, but White Heat is pretty dark for its time. Many descriptions peg the main character Cody (not a very gangster name, tbh) as ‘psychopathic’ and ‘homicidal’ and that is very true. He doesn’t blink twice when offing someone and in some scenes, he seems to relish the torture he inflicts on his victims. It’s not that I wanted a gangster with a heart of gold, but I wasn’t expecting one so gangster-y.

As mentioned above, everything Cody does is for his mother. He runs the gang, but only gives orders that he knows she would approve of. I really liked her character because she didn’t put up with anything. In one scene, Cody is planning on giving himself up to police and when she is questioned later on, she plays the role perfectly of mom who doesn’t know anything, but will kick your ass if you keep asking. I had very little sympathy for Cody throughout the film, but what little I could muster was because of her and how true his love was. Plus, she left hiding to go buy the gangsters strawberries, so you can’t really hate someone who does that.

White Heat surprised me by how complicated it was, from both sides. The FBI obviously had no computers back then, but still managed to stay one up on the gang at all times. Cody, too, always thought ahead, like when he paid someone to rob a store many states away so that he could confess to it later on, thus providing an alibi for the much larger crime of a train robbery. In an effort to get Cody to admit his deception, the FBI plants one of their men as his cellmate to gain his trust. When Cody decides to break out, the FBI arranges a getaway car so that his relationship with agent Hank Fallon was still intact. And it’s not really a criticism of this film, but this constant life of being on the run made me wonder what the benefits of being a gangster really are. From the very beginning with the train robbery, everyone lives in constant fear of getting caught and must perform bigger heists to keep the money flowing in. I may just be lazy, but the lifestyle just seems like a lot of work. There were a few scenes of the gangsters counting their money, but besides buying high priced suits, what did they use it for? Being a gangster fit Cody because he was crazy, but I don’t know about the other ones.

Look, Ma, I’m on top of the world!

Final review: 4/5

Up next: The Firemen’s Ball