Originally Posted by
Phil D. Rolls
At first I was caught up in seeing it as a Glasgow story. By the end of the film I saw it as being in the same league as The Long Good Friday. I thought Compston was excellent, as always.
Something like that.
His boyhood friend was played by Pat O'Brien. They'd both been delinquents, Cagney went one road, O'Brien went into the priesthood.
He was running a mission to prevent other kids from the area from making a career in crime. Cagney's character returned to the area and all the kids looked up to him and wanted to be him.
Pat O'Brien asks him to act the coward so that they will see him as a traitor. Cagney refuses, but at the end he freaks out. The question was always, was Rocky a coward, or did he do it for the kids.
Cagney desperately overacts in the last scene and is taking crying and screaming to the chair.