White Heat

Academy Award winner James Cagney delivers a tour-de-force performance as a murderously psychotic criminal mastermind with an overpowering mother complex in the crime thriller White Heat. While in prison, Cody Jarrett (Cagney) befriends an undercover cop (Edmond O'Brien) posing as a young thug--appearing to idolize the hard-bitten gangster who suffers from semi-epileptic seizures, outbursts of frightening violence and an almost incestuous attachment to his mother. Released from prison, Jarrett plots a seemingly perfect heist, unaware that his partners plan to kill him and his right-hand man is working for the police. Cornered, Jarrett chooses to go out in an explosive act of self-immolation rather than surrender in this classic of the gangster genre.