Cagney was a fighter in his youth; a boxer. He was also a master tap dancer. Both skills have similar movements; quick stepping, fast movements, extreme alertness, counting the beats, fast turns and jumps backward and forward.In this film, Jimmy starts to get into a fight. I was waiting for the classic boxing stances, but I didn't see any.Spoiler. Early in the film, Jimmy is fighting his sergeant, but near the end Jimmy ends up giving his life for ol' sarge.Jimmy starts out the film as cocky, smart-alecky and a know-it-all who really doesn't know much of anything.He is a raw recruit, a hayseed from the city, actually. He has no patriotic feeling; perhaps he is there just for the paycheck. The recruits are all gung ho and happy go lucky, and so are the soldiers already in uniform.We don't see the backstory, that after several years of President Woodrow Wilson not wanting to get the U.S. into The Great War, all of a sudden men are joining up. Was there a draft? There was a HUGE publicity campaign trying the convince the American public to go into the war, previously only a European interest. There were cartoon posters depicting the enemy as a huge, ugly monster or even the devil.Was this group a national guard? Where was the real army? Was the U.S. not prepared, or were the smallish group of regulars already overseas? Maybe Jimmy and his hayseeds only wanted to go and see French mademoiselles who Parlez-Vous'd Francaise and offered them snails for lunch. Ugh. Inky-dinky parley voo, indeed.Jimmy is a troublemaker and overly sure of himself. Spoilers ahead. He becomes a coward, but later saves some other people by ending up being a target of the enemy.I am female.I have studied several war courses as part of my history degree at university. It is interesting that this film was made right before the U.S. entered World War Two.I also love Jimmy Cagney, as well as tap dancing. You know that, from reading my other reviews. I love song and dance films very much, except that in this film the only singing is done at a church service.Not exactly my cup of tea, and even the black and white hurts my eyes, as you also well know. Anyway, give me Jimmy tap dancing any old day. Yankee Doodle Dandy was Jimmy's favorite film that he ever made. It is also one of my favorites that I have ever seen; black and white, but I have never seen a colorized version of Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Directed by William Keighley, with an original screenplay by Norman Reilly Raine, Fred Niblo Jr., and Dean Franklin, this average World War II features an all star cast led by James Cagney, in a somewhat against type role as a street tough loner who turns "yellow" in combat. Pat O'Brien plays Father Francis Duffy (naturally), who refuses to give up on Jerry Plunkett (Cagney); George Brent (also somewhat against type) plays the platoon's hard driving Major "Wild Bill" Donovan. Evidently, the real Duffy was memorialized with a statue, posthumously. Jeffrey Lynn plays the company's famous poet, and Sergeant Joyce Kilmer.In a group loaded with Irish Americans from New York, primarily, Alan Hale plays Sergeant "Big Mike" Wynn, who has several scraps with the tough young Private Plunkett in his regiment. Frank McHugh provides comic relief (as usual); Dennis Morgan appears briefly as a Lieutenant, as does "the Singing Cowboy" Dick Foran. William Lundigan, Guinn "Big Boy" Williams, Sammy Cohen, William Hopper, and Tom Dugan also appear as recently enlisted men in the famous unit. Foran, Hale, and Lundigan plays three members of the same family (brothers), descending in rank, within the group. Once the inductees are ready for battle and shipped "over there", Henry O'Neill and John Litel appear as the Colonel and the Captain, respectively. John Ridgely, whom I recall seeing, and George Reeves, whom I don't, also appear uncredited (among MANY others) as soldiers in this film.The story is a bit sappy, perhaps, released well before our involvement in the conflict brewing in the East, but it's watch-able nonetheless. Despite the plethora of Warner Bros. stars in the cast, it's only Cagney, O'Brien, Brent, and Hale who are charged with carrying the load. The focus of the plot is on Cagney's character, perhaps one of the least likable he ever played - a coward, the first ever in the famed unit. Brent and Hale are ready to through him out, which takes ever increasing forms as the film progresses to the front lines of battle, while O'Brien tries (quite literally) to "save" him.The battle scenes are nothing spectacular, but realistic enough to give one at least a feel for the chaos that might cause one (like Cagney's Plunkett) to flinch when faced with the reality of such terror. It probably comes as no surprise to anyone (lest this be a spoiler) that there's a change in our protagonist at just the right time, before the film's conclusion.

" . . . a poem lovely as WWIII." This is the sort of doggerel verse by Sgt. Joyce Kilmer that bogged down America's efforts to win WWI, THE FIGHTING 69th documents. (Sgt. Kilmer was a member of that unit.) As if it weren't bad enough for future generations of American Youth to suffer through Kilmer's School of Emmeline Grangerford Rhyming* every "Arbor Day," Sgt. Kilmer demoralized his fellow Doughboys by muttering morbid verses on the march such as the one he (in the guise of actor Jeffrey Lynn) voices about 50 minutes into this flick. His company's most perceptive member, "Pvt. Jerry Plunkett" (James Cagney), is the first to realize that Kilmer's grotesque defeatism is distracting and demoralizing the entire Expeditionary Force, and that if this jaded gibberish gets translated into French and British, then surely the Allies will lose the War. Swallowing his pride, Jerry springs into action by brilliantly feigning cowardice to engineer Kilmer's battlefield demise. With no one else cursed by the warped sensibilities of Joyce Adverse, Sgt. Kilmer is laid low himself in a muddy ditch without a single stanza--not so much as a couplet. This frees up Jerry to lead his reviving comrades almost single-handedly, winning the War in short order.*Please see chapters 17 through 19 of Mark Twain's THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN.

Hollywood released quite a few films with the Pat O'Brien, Jimmy Cagney pairing with the same general theme, one which I think is unfairly dismissed here as 'cliched'.In each of these films, Cagney's character was an Irish ghetto hood, full of street values (toughness at all costs... taking, lying, and using ... physical aggressiveness ... resistance to authority or discipline ... contempt for 'chump' 'soft' moral values). He saw Pat O'Brien's character as 'soft' because he was a 'sucker' with all his 'morality' talk.The redemption came when Cagney's character contrasted Father Duffy's steady courage under fire with his own terror. His street values taught him to respect courage. But he saw that his street values can teach him defiance but not serenity. Serenity comes from moral character and the street cannot teach you that. He saw that there is, as the song goes, more to being a man than just being macho. And there is a courage that has nothing to do with your fists. That is a very, very important point.