A lawyer, whose benefactor runs a racket, goes to work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It's the early days of the F.B.I. - federal agents working for the Department of Justice. Though they have limited powers - they don't carry weapons and have to get local police approval for arrests - that doesn't stop fresh Law School grad Eddie Buchanan from joining up, and he encourages his former roommate James "Brick" Davis (James Cagney) to do so as well. Davis, having completed law school, wants to be an honest lawyer, not a shyster, despite his ties to mobster boss McKay. He's intent on doing so, until Buchanan is gunned down trying to arrest career criminal Danny Leggett. Davis soon joins the "G-Men" as they hunt down Leggett (soon-to-be Public Enemy Number One) and his cronies Collins and Durfee, who are engaged in a crime and murder spree from New York to the midwest. —Gary Dickerson <slug@mail.utexas.edu> In New York, James 'Brick' Davis was a poor boy that the mob kingpin 'Mac' McKay paid his college tuition at the Law School without requesting anything in return but be a honest man. His best friend and roommate at college Edward "Eddie" Buchanan visits him at his office and gives an application form to the Department of Justice, since he knows Davis's business is weak because he is an honest man. When Eddie is murdered by gangster, Davis fills the application form and sends to the FBI. He is hired, travels to Washington, but soon he has relationship problems with his trainer Jeff McCord. When the chief of the Bureau, Gerard, assigns a team to hunt down Buchanan's killer, Davis wants to join the team, but he has not completed his training yet and Gerad refuses. Davis sees Jeff's sister, the nurse Kay McCord, he puts his eyes on her, but she does not pay attention to him. Meanwhile 'Mac' McKay retires from the crime life and buys a resort to work honestly for the rest of his life. Davis identifies one criminal, Danny Leggett, in an open case and the criminal is arrested by the agents. But soon the agents that are escorting him are murdered by the mobsters and Leggett flees. After a slaughter of agents, the laws change, and the G-Men are allowed to have guns to fight the organized crime. Now McCord sees that Davis is an important agent and assigns him to take down Leggett and his gangsters. —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Brick Davis is a street-wise New York City lawyer who decides to join the US Department of Justice and become a G-Man after his friend Eddie Buchanan, also a G-Man, is gunned down by mobsters. Davis' schooling was actually paid by a friend, Mac McKay, a benevolent mobster who wanted to make sure that Brick didn't end up on the wrong side of the law. He hasn't been very successful as a lawyer so law enforcement seems to be the next best thing. When mobsters go on a spree of bank robberies in the US midwest, Davis is assigned to the Chicago field office. As they arrest the mobsters one by one, Davis learns that the rest of the gang is hiding out at a hotel run by his onetime friend and mentor McKay. Things come to a head when the last remaining gunman kidnaps a fellow G-Man's sister. —garykmcd
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