A Lion Is in the Streets

The movie offers, amid its hectic and rowdy melodrama, a constant and underlying vision of the crucial power of government to serve the public good—and the ease with which that power can, almost invisibly, be shifted to the unfair advantage of the rich and the connected.

A headlong and dynamic drama about a back-country champion of the poor who permits his political ambitions to pull him down a perilously crooked road.

Though the story is a hackneyed one--the rise of an itinerant to a position of power--Cagney is so dynamic that he rivets the viewer's attention.

This covers much the same ground as Robert Rossen's earlier feature, All the King's Men, and Robert Collins' later telemovie, The Life and Assassination of the Kingfish. In decidedly more idiosyncratic style, however, with Cagney's aggressive energy suggesting the particular populist allure of the Southern shyster/demagogue.

An effective, superficial film, much inferior to All the Kings Men, which was also based on Louisianas governor Huey Long. [30 Jan 2000]

A melodramatic tale at heart, but carried off with some wit and flair. [01 Feb 2000, p.24]

The Adrian Locke Langley novel was a long time coming to the screen since first purchased by the Cagneys for filming. Along the way it lost a lot of the shocker quality and emerges as just an average drama of a man's political ambitions.