"Torrid Zone" was the final film with real life friends, James Cagney and Pat O' Brien. They made several memorable films together for the studio, "Angels With Dirty Faces" being the best. The above is a light-hearted and amusing film about the various struggles on a Mexican plantation. The script is fairly standard but the cast really a lot to the screenplay by giving good performances and demonstrating a flair for light comedy. Ann Sheridan is a very good leading lady for James Cagney. She plays a card shark and nightclub singer who is on the run. They and O' Brien play off each other to amusing effect. The gunfight scenes add a bit to the proceedings as well.Released in 1940, "Torrid Zone" probably did respectable business at the box office.

It's one of those movies about the tropics, in this instance somewhere in the Caribbean or Central America, in which women are loose and the men all wear white suits and panama hats, except when they're out in the jungle and sport pith helmets, riding breeches, and boots.Pat O'Brien is the manager of a fruit company and James Cagney is his subordinate in charge of the isolated Plantation Number Seven or something like that. You have rarely heard such fast and zippy dialog. The two of them speak with more speed than I can THINK. Many of the usual Warners stalwarts show up, including George Tobias as a cheerful revolutionary leader who wants his land back. Ann Sheridan is the peripatetic, tough-talking babe, who falls for Cagney, although I don't know why -- he's constantly pushing her around and telling her to get the hell out. William Keighley directed.Nothing in or about the movie is to be taken seriously. Not the fist fights, not the arguments, not Sheridan's mooning over Cagney, not the shoot outs, not the hair-rising escapes from disaster, not O'Brien's conundrum in which he must hire Cagney as his best worker even though he hates him. Certainly not Tobias's revolution. Twice, Tobias is about to be shot by the Guardia Civil or whatever that agency is called -- you know, the one that works for United Fruit Company? Tobias is casual, philosophical, about the prospect of being shot at dawn. He treats his imminent death as an irritant, an annoyance, as if it's going to interfere with a big date he'd planned for tomorrow night.I didn't give a fig about any of it. It didn't matter to me if Sheridan married Cagney or O'Brien, or decided to enter a nunnery. But it's not intended to be the kind of movie in which you are deeply moved. You're supposed to be entertained. And the movie achieves it goal. Everyone darts around and throws barbs at everyone else. There's action aplenty in the studio-bound tropics. Put up your hands. "I tink I shoot you as a matter of convenience."

Torrid Zone (1940) ** 1/2 (out of 4) A banana plantation owner (Pat O'Brien) hires a tough guy (James Cagney) to look after everything but an escaped bandit (George Tobias) causes some trouble as does a woman (Ann Sheridan). This is a slightly entertaining film that offers some nice performances but in the end there's nothing too special with the screenplay, which at times wonders around. O'Brien steals the show as the tough talking owner and this is one exception where he steals the film from Cagney. Cagney is decent in his role but he doesn't bring too much energy to the film. I'm not a fan of Sheridan but she's actually very good her delivering a tough performance. Tobias is great as the villain and Andy Devine offers nice comic support. The cast makes the film entertaining but I wish the screenplay had tried to do a tad bit more. The movie is pretty light weight, which keeps it from being better.

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..."