As a serious study of a corrupt demagogue this film is clearly useless. There are simply too many ludicrous scenes. Let's list two, shall we? First there's the one where the demagogue's mistress attempts to feed his wife to the gators (yeah, you read that right) only to have the wife decide, when the attempt fails, not to rat her out. Then there's that trial scene where we are asked to believe that a judge, even a crooked one, would allow a man who is bleeding to death from multiple gunshot wounds to take the stand. As a biopic of Huey Long this film also falls short, mostly due to Cagney, with his pathetically inept try at a cracker accent and being ten, no make that twenty, years too old for the part coming in a distant second to Broderick Crawford who deservedly picked up the Oscar for "All The King's Men". However, (and it's this "however" that makes "Lion" a fairly good movie) as a study of mob violence and the suddenness of its onset and the scariness of its furor director Raoul Walsh and scenarist Luther Davis are not only on firmer ground than in their attempts to show how power corrupts but they are on strong prophetic ground as well with the scenes of Cagney, (who was born in Manhattan), refusing to concede, inciting a riot and exhorting his rioters to march on the state capitol, all eerily reminiscent of the behavior of another native New Yorker on Jan. 6, 2021. At this point, roughly the last third of the film, I became mesmerized. Give it a B minus. PS...The only performance that stood out for me was Onslow Stevens as a Southern version of Edward Arnold in "Mr Smith". Haven't really seen much of this actor's work, a condition I hope to rectify.
Review of A Lion Is in the Streets
