Warner Bros. had built a solid niche around the gangster film. James Cagney was instrumental in bringing the genre to prominence: films such as The Public Enemy (1931) and Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) were pillars that helped sustain the legendary studio throughout the decade. With The Roaring Twenties, Raoul Walsh crafted a film that serves as the closing chapter of the classic gangster film, a genre that would evolve in the following decade toward a darker, more cynical tone: film noir.

James Cagney plays Eddie Bartlett, a World War I veteran who returns home hoping for a fresh start. Instead, he soon collides with a hostile reality: society has little place for him, the economic crisis is hitting hard, Prohibition has turned the alcohol trade into forbidden territory, and job opportunities are scarce. The criminal underworld ultimately presents itself as his only way out, and he soon reconnects with his old comrades from the trenches, among them George Hally (Humphrey Bogart). Eddie Bartlett’s journey thus becomes the narrative vehicle through which the film portrays the fate of an entire nation during a decisive period in its history.

Within its genre, the film works effectively. Its characters are well defined, and their dramatic arcs unfold with considerable efficiency, although they are inevitably constrained by the censorship of the Hays Code. The pacing is brisk, and the action sequences are executed with precision; Walsh strikes an effective balance between drama and action. Perhaps the film’s weakest element is its use of voice-over narration to construct the transitions that carry us across different periods and pivotal moments in American society. While functional, the narration occasionally disrupts the film’s narrative flow.

The dynamic between Cagney and Bogart is one of the film’s greatest strengths and is largely what holds The Roaring Twenties together. They are two stars at very different points in their careers: Cagney was already an established star, while Bogart was on the verge of becoming a cinema icon. Walsh understood that he had in his hands not simply a gangster story, but a requiem for an era and for a particular kind of tragic hero that Hollywood itself had helped create. With the outbreak of World War II just around the corner, the film effectively closes the chapter on the gangster as a symbol of the corrupted American Dream, leaving the ground prepared for film noir to take over in the following decade.