In a foxhole on the western front, three doughboys meet and go there divergent paths back home in the big city. Eddie (James Cagney) has a rough go of finding work and stumbles into the bootlegging business. Straightlaced Lloyd (Jeffrey Lynn) starts a law practice and heartless George (Humphrey Bogart) falls back in as a sailor and climbs his way to the top of the rumrunning rackets. Raoul Walsh's "The Roaring Twenties", from a story by Mark Hellinger, is one of the more affectionate gangster pictures that Warner Brothers put out during the era. Cagney is magnetic in a more affable role than his earlier "The Public Enemy" and Humphrey Bogart is in fine form as the ruthless bootlegger who briefly teams up with Cagney. I also liked the work of Gladys George as speakeasy matron Panama Smith as well as Frank McHugh as Cagney's cabbie pal from back home. "The Roaring Twenties", though still condemning of the gangster lifestyle, is lighter and one of the more enjoyable genre pictures of the time.
