Rating: 
Summary: SLIGHTLY WEAK LOOKING TRANSFER FOR ROBINSON'S ROGUE
Review: "Little Caesar" (1931) is a slightly off kilter recanting of the Al Capone story, told under the auspices of not so pure fiction. Chicago nobody, Caesar Enrico Bandello (Edward G. Robinson) acquires a toe hold in Sam Vettori's (Stanley Fields) mob. In no time he's muscled Sam out of his digs and bumped up against rival thug, Little Arnie Lorch (Maurice Black). After some fast talking and slick shooting, Caesar emerges the kingpin of kingpins; a magnet for hard-hitting smart talking success or, if you prefer, the antithesis of the American dream. Shrewd and ever growing suspicious and paranoid, Caesar eventually finds both his niche and his downfall in Olga Strassoff (Glenda Farrell), a little bit of something who weaves her magic like a spider. Along with "The Public Enemy", this film established the Warner in-house style for social consciousness and nail-biting drama.
Director, Raoul Walsh seems to know his way around a gat in this yarn about gangsters and vixens, but in retrospect, this film lacks the immediate fireball response generated by "The Public Enemy."
Warner's DVD transfer falls short of expectations. Though the gray scale is often nicely balanced, the image quite often reflects a decidedly soft characteristic that is blurry on the eyes. Age related artifacts are persistent and sometimes distracting. At times the image quality is quite unstable, changing from generally smooth and nicely contrasted to wildly grainy image quality from shot to shot. Vertical lines and a tears crop up throughout the film and, while not present for very long, nevertheless distract. The audio is mono and generally pleasing, though background hiss is quite noticeable. Extras include a commentary by Richard Jewell that is just average, a newly produced featurette and Leonard Maltin doing his thing with "Warner's Night at the Movies." The 1954 re-release trailer is also included.
Rating: 
Summary: Sorry but i dont think this is a great gangster film
Review: all the critics always rave as this is the all time gangster film, i disagree. I think it is slow moving without much to hold interest. Personally i love the oldies, i like other work by Edward G Robinson as well as the Bogart and Cagney gangster films but little ceaser is not worth all the hype. Maybe it inspired other films but the other films are better. Instead of this film i recomend Brother Orchard with Robinson & Bogart, Angels with dirty faces with Cagney , and Bullets and Ballots with Bogie.
Rating:
Summary: Sorry but i dont think this is a great gangster film
Review: all the critics always rave as this is the all time gangster film, i disagree. I think it is slow moving without much to hold interest. Personally i love the oldies, i like other work by Edward G Robinson as well as the Bogart and Cagney gangster films but little ceaser is not worth all the hype. Maybe it inspired other films but the other films are better. Instead of this film i recomend Brother Orchard with Robinson & Bogart, Angels with dirty faces with Cagney , and Bullets and Ballots with Bogie.
Rating: 
Summary: ICONIC WARNER GANGSTER CLASSIC
Review: Hollywood got the message when 37 year old Edward G. Robinson bellowed into the phone, "This is Rico speaking. Rico! R-I-C-O! Rico! Little Caesar, that's who!" in the iconic LITTLE CAESAR (1930). The dark moral tale recounts the rise and fall of pugnacious Caesar Enrico Bandello (Robinson), a hoodlum with a Chicago-sized chip on his shoulder, few attachments, fewer friends and no sense of mobster etiquette.
Extras: a 1930 newsreel, the Spencer Tracy short "The Hard Guy," "Lady Play Your Mandolin" cartoon and the new featurette "Little Caesar: End of Rico, Beginning of the Antihero." The interesting commentary's by cinema historian Richard Jewell.
Rating:
Summary: No, it's not about pizza
Review: I had never seen a golden age gangster picture before so I decided to make a start with this one. I mainly rented it to see Douglas Fairbanks jr. (being a fan of Fairbanks Sr.'s silent films) I thoroughly enjoyed it.A word of warning, this was made in 1930 and the sound cinema was still in it's infancy. Some of the acting is still between the mnore obvious emoting of silent cinema and the more subtle sound acting to come. Also, this was the start of a genre and so it is probably not as sleek as its successors. That out of the way, this is the tale of the rise and fall of Rico (Edward G. Robinson) known as Little Caesar. A small time gunman who claws his way to the top of the mob and then tumbles from his throne. His downfall is caused, inadvertantly at first, by Joe (Fairbaks), his best friend from his small time hood days who became a nightclub preformer and wants to leave the mob behind. Robinson chews up scenery as Rico and it is a joy to watch, in spite of sharing top billing, Fairbanks isn't in it all that much in the middle. Honorable mention goes to the actor who portrayed the head detective so well, he seemed to take almost satanic glee in catching crooks in their own egos. Another sidepoint, Rico is not likable because he was never meant to be. Sure, his determination is interesting but underneath it all he is just a petty operator. This movie really has no hero (Joe is a bit weak and the detective is off his rocker in my opinion) and to have this in mind before watching will keep things enjoyable.
Rating:
Summary: Little Caesar: Little in Height Only
Review: It is too easy to view LITTLE CAESAR and to laugh at the often caricatured voice of Edward G. Robinson as the small time hood who clawed a rapid rise to the top of Chicago's underworld only to tumble equally fast. What the modern viewer may fail to grasp is that when LITTLE CAESAR was released in 1930 Robinson was no star and the gangster movie did not exist as a genre. With his menacing voice and tough guy attitude, Robinson changed all that. It is because of him that later cinema gangsters like Pacino and Brando could strut their stuff. At the beginning of the film, Robinson is Rico Bandello, the 'Little Caesar.' He drifts into Chicago and invites himself as a member of the ruling gang. Even then, with nothing but his gravitas and physical presence, he could take words that were meant to be conciliating and twist them into a snarl laden with menace. What I found interesting was that whenever Robinson went face to face with an adversary, Robinson forced him to look down at his own diminutive height as if to say, 'Your size means nothing, fool.' It becomes soon clear that the mob boss will surrender his place through default. Rico Bandello manages to cram into little more than an hour a case study in the ephemerality of the solitary gangster who relies more on his brutal personality than on some hired brains to run his criminal enterprise. On a technical note, the sound track was at times incomprehensible, an excusable flaw since sound engineering had just begun the year before. Further, the dialogue sounds incredibly cliched, but again, to the audience of 1930, Rico's words were jarringly original. When a gasping, dying, Little Caesar spits out as a last snarl of defiance, 'Is this the end of Rico?', Edward G. could not have known that his ending of this gangster film was but the prologue of a series of crime movies that are as popular today as when Rico Bandello lay on a filthy street, shocking America with his surprisingly emotional epitaph.
Rating: 
Summary: 193O GANGSTER EPIC.
Review: The rise and fall of a vicious gangster. This is the landmark film that launched the gangster movie cycle, a powerful movie that chronicled for the first time in talkies the sleazy and slick underworld, epitomised by a snarling and ambitious creature with no redeeming virtues, Robinson, in the role which was forever identified with him. Eddie is a dedicated killer and thief as seen from the very beginning of the film: viewing him over 6O years later, the viewer can't help but to wonder at his incredibly perceptive performance. Rico has a pseudo homosexual relationship with Joe Massara (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) and the scene where Rico pays an old harridan (Lucille LaVerne) practically his entire fortune to hide him out in a secret back room of her store is memorable: boy, does she take advantage of the situation! The ending line was originally "Mother of God, is this the end of Rico?" In order to soften the tone for American Bible belt audiences, the line was changed to "Mother of mercy". The film was a huge smash in it's day and films such as THE PUBLIC ENEMY, SMART MONEY, THE FINGER POINTS & SCARFACE were soon to follow.
Rating:
Summary: It has aged tremendously
Review: This film was a direct ideological intervention in the debate about prohibition, or exactly for the repealing of the famous amendment that had introduced prohibition. The argument was that prohibition gave gangsters a tremendous field of development and thriving. As such it was an important film. But nowadays it does not work at all on this level. The acting is cold and very stiff. The plot is reduced to a caricature of anything it deals with. It is definitely neither thrilling, not exciting, nor even entertaining. Too slow, too trite, too superficial. And, what's more, Little Caesar is no Al Capone. It is not with mediocre characters that we can make a great film. Note yet one important conclusion we can draw from the film: crime, for those mostly Italian poor immigrants, was a compensation for their poverty and alienation. The film tried to show that it was an illusion: one can start from the gutter and get to the top thanks to crime, but one will necessarily end up in the gutter again, and most of the time with a few slugs of lead in his flesh. The morality of the police guns that look after our welfare, even when the crime considered is created by an absurd constitutional and legislative decision. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Perpignan
Rating: 
Summary: Little Story
Review: This is a fairly decent performance by Edward G. Robinson and the rest the cast but the story is not that compelling and the sets, music, and direction don't stand out. I recommend "Key Largo" over this one. Both Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart put in great performances. Not only that you have a better story, music, and direction. Besides you can get "Key Largo" on DVD for less than this movie. Even fans of this movie should consider the fact it is expensive for VHS. I wouldn't buy "Little Caesar" on VHS anyway, I would wait for it on DVD if you like it.
Rating:
Summary: Little Story
Review: This is a fairly decent performance by Edward G. Robinson and the rest the cast but the story is not that compelling and the sets, music, and direction don't stand out. I recommend "Key Largo" over this one. Both Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart put in great performances. Not only that you have a better story, music, and direction. Besides you can get "Key Largo" on DVD for less than this movie. Even fans of this movie should consider the fact it is expensive for VHS. I wouldn't buy "Little Caesar" on VHS anyway, I would wait for it on DVD if you like it.
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