Though you’ve probably never heard of it, in 1939, Jimmy Cagney, one of the most typecast gangsters in cinema history, starred in what may have been one of the best, most understated roles in his career. The movie was The Roaring Twenties, and while it’s no White Heat and there are no bravura shoutings of “Top of the World, ma, top of the world!”, it still ranks up there with some of his best work.

Starring Cagney as a taxi driver who transports booze during Prohibition, the film is wrought with history, Cagneyisms (like the raised lip and slurred staccato speech) and even Bogartisms (Good ‘ol Humphrey plays a former barkeep) and follows a long string of romance and frequent gunfire interspersed throughout the story. Cagney bites it in the end (no surprise) and dies in dramatic fashion in the snow, making him a tragic hero if there ever was one.

And if you’re looking for a moral to all this, don’t. There really isn’t one other than live recklessly and die young. Cagney makes you feel that last breath of his out in the snow. Isn’t that enough for you?

If it isn’t, here are some other choice gangster films that will make you feel all warm and tingly inside, possibly from lead: Little Caesar, Goodfellas, Casino, Road to Perdition. Too bad Halloween is past and there’s no chance to show your true gangster talents. Or is there?…