A brilliant film that helped define a genre

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Between 1934 and 1940, James Cagney and Pat O'Brien appeared in an incredible nine films together, taking a forty year break before working together for one more time in 1981's "Ragtime". But if you're accustomed to the stereotyped roles of Cagney as a gangster and O'Brien as a warm hearted and benevolent confidante, you're in for a surprise in this 1940 Warner Brothers gem, "Torrid Zone." O'Brien in particular catches you off guard as scheming, conniving banana plantation owner Steve Case. Case is accustomed to demanding his own way, and is not above bullying everyone else who he considers to be subservient. But then again, about the only way the other lead characters in this movie survive is to be conniving in their own way, from Cagney's itinerant foreman persona, Nick Butler, to Ann Sheridan's turn as card shark and saloon singer, Lee Donley. Throw into the mix the guerrilla outlaw Rosario (George Tobias), inept police chief Rodriguez (Frank Puglia), and Nick Butler's forlorn former lover Gloria Anderson (Helen Vinson), and you've got the makings of a fast and furious comedy where the verbal barbs fly. Some of the more memorable ones: Chief Rodriguez, prior to the attempted execution of Rosario - "After a good night's sleep, a man doesn't mind being shot." Rosario La Mata, following a shootout between his guerrilla band and Cagney/Butler's crew - "Senor Butler, I congratulate myself on your bad shooting." Rosario to Sheridan's Donley character following his capture for the second time - "Always before I am killed you come into my life." The story itself is almost secondary to the characters, but quite briefly, Steve Case convinces Nick Butler to take over operation of banana plantation Number 7 in order to make it profitable and get the goods to market while still fresh. Butler, who's womanizing reputation is put to the test, must overcome railroad sabotage, Ann Sheridan's "oomph" factor, Mrs. Anderson's plans to return with him to the States, and outlaw Rosario's efforts to win his land back for the natives. Along the way, he's aided by sidekick Wally Davis, portrayed by Andy Devine.For trivia fans, keep a watchful eye out for future TV Superman George Reeves as Rosario's henchman Sancho.When originally offered the part for "Torrid Zone", Cagney declined because the portrayal called for a character too similar to one's he had already played in prior films. George Raft was up for the part, and Cagney changed his mind on one condition, that he he get to wear a mustache - "No mustache, no Cagney". Obviously, Warner Brothers relented, and the rest as they say, is film history.

A couple of buddies chasing a buck, and usually a woman, in what we now call the Third World was a staple plot-line of movies from the 1930s on. Such movies were thought to offer a sure-fire recipe for entertainment: a travelogue to sultry and dangerous corners of the globe; romance sauced up with sass; exotic peril; and good ol' man-to-man rivalry. Torrid Zone, directed by the pedestrian William Keighley, follows the recipe but lacks something in the execution – that elusive something that elevates the routine into the memorable. Down in Central America, Pat O'Brien plays the irascible operative of a banana-exporting concern (read: the infamous United Fruit Company). Besides shipping ripe but not rotten product to New Orleans, he serves as unofficial proconsul in this far-flung province of the American empire, where his word is, literally, law. (This subversive strand of the script, however, never gets explored.)In addition to sluggish delivery from Plantation #7, O'Brien faces other problems. First, a local `revolutionista' condemned to death has escaped to rejoin rebel forces. Second, an American card-shark and shantoozie (Ann Sheridan) is stirring up trouble (O'Brien flubs his attempt to ship her home like a crate of perishable fruit). Third, his old nemesis James Cagney, former overseer of #7, is back in the country. Cagney takes a shine to Sheridan, who has befriended the revolutionary, who wants back the lands confiscated by O'Brien, who....Barbed and topical dialogue, most of it mouthed throatily by Sheridan, proves to be Torrid Zone's chief attraction. But the needling rivalry between O'Brien and Cagney wears a little thin (as it does in the contemporaneous Road pictures between Hope and Crosby). And Keighley doggedly follows the script from one damn thing to another, so the movie ends up a fast-paced clutter. O'Brien, a good actor who never really grew into a star (though he would shine in Crack-Up and Riffraff a few years later), suffers mostly from an unpleasant part. Cagney, in a Latin-lover mustache and the tropical answer to a 10-gallon hat, comes off as a bit of a bantam rooster. But Sheridan (whom Warner's publicists had dubbed the `Oomph' girl) remains a delight, embodying the pluck, warmth and smarts of that generation of game women who survived the Depression and would help to win the coming War.

This remake of "The Front Page" is an improvement, as far as I'm concerned. The combination of Wald/Macaulay and the Warner Brothers stock company is sure-fire ("They Drive By Night"!) Ann Sheridan is vivacious as a trodden-upon showgirl, singing "My Caballero" and trading vicious quips with the scheming O'Brien and the dynamic Cagney. Special mention must go to George Tobias, one of the funniest character actors of the studio age, who plays Rosario, the guerilla leader sentenced to death "just because I shoot a man..."

Good movie - love the way Ann Sheridan goes head to head toe to toe with Cagney in some very snappy dialogue.