89
Metascore
21 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100The New York TimesBosley CrowtherThe New York TimesBosley CrowtherThe Warners have pulled all the stops in making this picture the acme of the gangster-prison film. They have crammed it with criminal complications—some of them old, some of them glittering new—pictured to technical perfection in a crisp documentary style. And Mr. Cagney has played it in a brilliantly graphic way, matching the pictorial vigor of his famous "Public Enemy" job.
- 100Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenAustin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenTalk about your baby boys – Cagney takes the cake here as a psychopathic gangster with a seriously perverse mother complex. A gangster classic.
- 100Chicago TribuneChicago TribunePerhaps the roughest of the classic gangster movies, with a climax that almost blows the theater down. [24 Jul 2009, p.C3]
- 100EmpireDavid ParkinsonEmpireDavid ParkinsonMagnificent examination of the criminal mind and Cagney's finest moment.
- 100Entertainment WeeklyEntertainment WeeklyWalsh’s White Heat, starring Cagney in great form as psychotic mamma’s boy Cody Jarrett, is shot by shot, frame by frame, the hard-boiled masterpiece of the bunch.
- 83The A.V. ClubNoel MurrayThe A.V. ClubNoel MurrayCagney's magnetism stems from his note-perfect combination of broad gestures and subtle shifts of posture, but the keen eyes of his directors are what make his gangster pictures classics.
- 80The tight-lipped scowl, the hunched shoulders that rear themselves for the kill, the gargoyle speech, the belching gunfire of a trigger-happy paranoiac - one with a mother complex, no less - these are the standard and still-popular ingredients that constitute the James Cagney of White Heat.
- 80The GuardianThe GuardianCagney builds a weird tragedy, and there is no more apocalyptic ending than when he and his world blow up to his triumphant cry, "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!"
- 63Slant MagazineEric HendersonSlant MagazineEric HendersonWhite Heat’s ultimate message: love’s a bitch…even crypto-incestuous love.