Little Caesar

1931 gangster picture

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Rico's a small-time crook with big big plans. Even though he's only slightly bigger than a pretty big midget, he's no longer satisfied with robbing tiny gas stations in the country. He's got his eyes on the riches that the big city has to offer. He joins a gang, gets a reputation as a trigger-happy rookie, kills the city's crime commissioner, and begins to climb the gangster ladder until he reaches the top. But what goes up must come down. Or get shot but fail to bleed.

This was almost like a parody. The acting was terrible, likely even terrible for a 1930's production, and the story was predictable and formulaic. To be fair, it probably wasn't as predictable or formulaic in 1931, but watching it in 2008 (or whatever year this is), it's hard to ignore just how dated it is. Original? Possibly one of those movies that was so frequently copied following its release that it seems pretty cookie cutter almost 80 years later. Edward G. Robinson's performance was fun enough, but the performance wasn't good enough to really make me care about his character. Gangster movies have never really been my thing (I like mine with swords), probably because my childhood was filled with people depositing horse's heads in my bed. Once, somebody put a zebra's head in my bed, and more than once, the entire horse was left there. A couple times it was the horse's body without the head. Regardless, my mother would inevitably blame me and my "idiot friends" and I'd get in trouble. Bad memories.

Here I am waiting for Little Caesar to get his comeuppance and wondering why nobody uses the word comeuppance much anymore: