Edgar Allan Pooh . . . documenting how pretty much every American business in 1936 was short-changing its customers by 3% to 50% (the higher percentage always was in effect when defenseless orphans were involved) on EVERY transaction. Law enforcement existed primarily to squelch any dissent, destroy all evidence of greedy gouging, and to liquidate any particularly troublesome followers of the Ten Commandments. In GREAT GUY, James Cagney portrays the title hero, the one honest man left in the U.S., the chief deputy of New York City's Weights and Measures Bureau. He's under constant physical attack and lethal threats in GREAT GUY, and doesn't seem long for this world. America always has fancied herself "The City on a Hill," but if the Second Coming came tomorrow, GREAT GUY shows how the whips would be flying as a lot more than the money changers' tables got overturned. Things are far worse now than in 1936. Gasoline prices SPIKE as the value of a barrel of oil nose-dives and record inventory fills every storage tank available. Food packagers put less and less product in bigger and bigger containers. I recently bought a pair of jeans from America's largest retailer, and the pockets turned out to be weaker than this national chain store's brand of facial tissues. Laws seem to be written to allow the One Per Cent to filch and hoard 99% of the country's wealth. Are we Mice, or are we Men? Watch GREAT GUY to see the Fat Cats licking their chops!

Theo Robertson James Cagney is one of the icons of the 20th Century . It's difficult to mention Classic Hollywood of the 1930s without mentioning James Cagney . He was a movie star rather than an actor who'd always be playing a magnetic anti-hero . In this 1936 film GREAT GUY he plays a stand-up hero called Johnny Cave in the Weights And Measures Department taking on corrupt politicians at City Hall The premise is utterly laughable . Johnny is good at his job as he exposes shop owners trying to rip off consumers by adding small weights to food products via sleight of hand . Laughable that is until to stop to think that prohibition had not long ended and mobsters were needing another market to break in to . Let's not also forget these dreadful action adventure from the 1990s films where Steven Seagal plays an eco-warrior dedicated to peace and harmony where he kills thousands of bad guys because they work for say an oil company . Certainly Cagney has a far more likable screen persona than Seagal And to enjoy GREAT GUY you have to turn off your brain and concentrate on the star power of a screen legend whose risking everything in life and life itself in order to protect you the innocent consumer . It's also interesting how much this film mirrors the later and superior Cagney star vehicle EACH DAWN I DIE

timothymcclenaghan This film has a stupid plot--merchant corruption policed by the Bureau of Weights & Measures, with related political corruption. If they wanted a movie about fighting corruption, there were plenty of other more interesting areas to explore.The script writers didn't give Cagney much to work with. He plays his stereotypical Irishman, and does his usual knocking people around.Did anyone else notice that Mae Clarke gets a little revenge against Cagney for his shoving a grapefruit in her face in Public Enemy? This time she plays a p-whipping shrew fiancée, with Cagney playing submissive and caving in to her.This movie may not have been officially a "B" movie since it probably didn't play second to another feature at the time, but it sure falls into that category in terms of quality.

classicsoncall Five years after she teamed up with James Cagney in "The Public Enemy", Mae Clarke makes another appearance, this time as his fiancée with Cagney's character on the other side of the law. It seems like she was calling more of the shots in their relationship as well, trying to get Johnny Cave to be a little more practical with his money and his career. You had to figure they'd get back together after she gave him the boot for challenging her crooked boss; those things have a way of working out in pictures.I got a kick out of watching Cagney in this one. I usually do, and here he looked like he might have auditioned that characteristic shoulder shrug move that he used to good effect in "Angels With Dirty Faces" portraying Rocky Sullivan. It was right after he threw Cavanaugh (Robert Gleckler) out of his office during the first attempt at bribing the new Weights and Measures boss. He turns to the camera and hitches up as if entirely pleased with his response to the crook - very cool.It's my understanding that this wasn't one of Cagney's Warner films, but it might as well have been. Warner's often took up the cause for the common man, and the expose of crooked merchants and the politicians who protected them would have been right up their alley. You also have those great New York City street scenes depicting cars and shops of the era, with home made signs pricing flour at eighteen cents a pound. Hey, how about the furniture store selling the living room set for a hundred eighty nine dollars, you might get a single stick chair for that price today.Best part of the picture just might be that meat counter scene when Cagney, James Burke (Aloysius) and the butchers play catch with an underweight chicken. One of the film's lighter moments, but you get an idea how tense people can get when they're caught cheating. Same with the truck driver who's pressured by Johnny into signing for an accurate delivery; he just wasn't used to doing that.All in all, a nice diversion from Cagney's more typical gangster presence, even if not up to the standard of his feature films. It's easy enough to obtain as one of a handful of public domain Cagney pictures out there, and often found in relatively inexpensive compilations.