Nice effects though.

Just what I expected

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

This time, James Cagney's up on a trumped up drunk driving charge and George Raft is the racketeer. Cagney was a reporter out to blow the lid off a crooked politician and an outburst in court added to his sentence. Through saving Raft's life from a prison rat, Cagney becomes his pal. Being the good guy he is (for a gangster anyway), Raft uses a convenient escape to help his new buddy out. After all, what are pals for, yaah? Yaah.Since he's already co-starred in gangster pictures with both EGR and Bogie, it was time for Raft to co- star. He gives a well rounded performance as a crook who knows he's in for the duration (199 years!) with nothing to lose but a wasted life if he doesn't attempt an escape. That sequence alone is quite thrilling, coming fast and out of nowhere. A clever script gives this fast pacing with an A budget and direction that would soon begin to wane in their early 40's B pictures. A bit of Warner Brothers publicity has the prisoners watching "Wings of the Navy", the perfect time for revenge on Joe Dowling, the rat. George Bancroft and Maxie Rosenbloom add color as some of Raft's cohorts, Jane Bryan as Cagney's devoted girl (there always has to be one of those, you see...) and Thurston Hall as the blowhard politician, more corrupt because of his own stupid arrogance and those around him than his own intelligence. Willard Robertson is a pretty brutal prison guard, one of the more hissable villains of prison films. Add in Emma Dunn for sentiment as Cagney's ma, and you've got the formula for a great melodrama that proves that crime does not pay, either for gangsters like Raft and dumb politicians like Hall.

. . . George Raft did not know "how to quit" James Cagney, either, in EACH DAWN I DIE. From their first exchange of shirts to their last stolen embrace, Raft's "Stacey" and Cagney's "Frank" are caught in the throes of a tie before its time. Their hot passion sees Frank sniveling like a babe in diapers during a forced separation, which is ended when Stacey ignores his 199-year sentence to take a cab BACK to Rocky Point Penitentiary when Frank's powerful pull on him overcomes his own sense of self-preservation. In today's happier times this odd couple might have tied the knot at their county courthouse. But in the 1930s, theirs was a love that could not be named. Therefore, actress Jane Bryan was cast to portray Frank's "beard," Joyce, and one of the not-so-tough-guy pair must bite the dust before this story can end, with a literal "till death do us part." As in last year's IMITATION GAME, the best acting performances always are turned in by gay men acting straight when the world is not quite AC\DC. So two thumbs up for Cagney and Raft in EACH DAWN I DIE!!

The investigative reporter Frank Ross (James Cagney) finds evidence of corruption against a powerful politician Jesse Hanley (Thurston Hall) that is candidate to Governor in the elections. Hanley sends his gangsters to catch Frank to frame him. They knock his head and soak him with whiskey and then they put him fainted in car that hits another and kills the driver and two passengers. Frank can not prove that he is innocent and is sentenced to twenty years of hard labor in Rocky Point Prison. The newspaper direction tries to find evidence of Frank's innocence while he befriends the gangster Stacey (George Raft) that was sentenced to 199 years. Stacey asks Frank to help him to be accused for a crime that he had not committed since he has planned to escape from the courthouse. In return, he would help to find who has framed him up using his contacts in the underworld. Will Stacey really find the responsible for the frame-up? "Each Dawn I Die" is and engaging prison movie, despite the unrealistic plot. Stacey spontaneously returning to Rock Point is absolutely unbelievable and destroys the story. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "A Morte me Persegue" ("The Death Chases me")

Although innocent, reporter Frank Ross (James Cagney) is found guilty of murder and is sent to jail. While his friends at the newspaper try to find out who framed him, Frank gets hardened by prison life and his optimism turns into bitterness. He meets fellow-inmate Stacey (George Raft) and they decide to help each other.Rather than be the good guy ("G Men") or the bad guy ("Public Enemy"), here we have Cagney as an innocent newspaper reporter framed and then sent to prison, where he becomes a little bit hardened. Maybe not quite a bad guy, but not really the good guy, either. It is a nice transformation, and an interesting commentary on prison life.I am not very familiar with George Raft (I actually know him more from reading Mafia history than from film), but if he is like he is here in other films, I need to see more George Raft.