Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

mark.waltz Making the Dead End Kids mayor of New York for a week is a fatal mistake they may not recover from. In 2013, the race for mayor truly is a circus, so one of the mayoral candidates could be as intelligent as this mayor and his cabinet. The story originally focuses on reform school kid Gabriel Dell who moves to a new neighborhood with sister Ann Sheridan, finding he can't escape his past, even though he's quickly adopted by the Beale Street gang which consists of Dead End Kid veterans Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall. When a nasty criminal element takes over, Dell is framed for starting a tenement fire which kills a crippled young boy and results in Dell's being sentenced to ten years in adult prison. This leads to the rest of the gang to use their week in city government to prove Gabe innocent. Dell reforms thanks to an adult, here played by that master of screen art, Ronald Reagen. The boys are supported by Sheridan who is romanced by Reagen, and by Bonita Granville, with Margaret Hamilton as their judgmental teacher and Berton Churchill as the rolly-poly mayor who looks nothing like Fiorello La Guardia. Marjorie Main is particularly haunting as the mother of the dead boy who gets support by the entire neighborhood in a touching scene. Hamilton is initially seen chastising Dell for his past in front of the other boys, then discourages the gang's mayoral candidate, and is noticeably upset when he wins. She represents the type of teacher who discourages as opposed to encourages, a genuine problem in public school education. Some tough action sequences, particularly a fight between Dell and the gang when they first meet, the blazing fire which is blamed on the new kid on the block (resulting in a climactic trial which reveals the corruption in some parts of city government), add much needed excitement to the initially comic structure. The simple message of the film is to never under- estimate the young. They start fighting for their future the minute they see what's at stake and how past generations have screwed it up. Warner Brothers did their own version of MGM's "Babes in Arms", released the same year, which ironically featured Hamilton as a city busybody fighting to get kids off the street and into a reform school.

Neil Doyle ANGELS WASH THEIR FACES is an obvious attempt to capitalize on the popularity of the previous ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES, but emerges as a vehicle for the Dead End Kids rather than giving ANN SHERIDAN or RONALD REAGAN a chance to demonstrate their chemistry.If you happen to be a fan of The Kids, this film is up your alley. They seem more like delinquents than real gangsters (by today's standards), while Sheridan and Reagan try to resolve the problems they create involving a wrongly accused case of arson.Ray Enright keeps it all moving rather briskly, but the script--with its focus on the kids rather than the stars--is a disappointment for fans of Sheridan and Reagan.The cast includes the usual Warner stock company of contract players, including Bonita Granville, Henry O'Neill, Eduardo Ciannelli, Frankie Thomas and Margaret Hamilton.Summing up: Routine crime drama interesting only for a glimpse of Ann Sheridan and Ronald Reagan at an early stage of their careers.

jotix100 This 1939 film tried to capitalize on the much better Michael Curtiz's film "Angels with Dirty Faces". As directed by Ray Enright, the only interesting thing is how tamed these kids were in comparison with what's going on with the youth in America's inner cities today.The film is only worth seeing because of the presence of Ann Sheridan and Ronald Reagan, who showed they were well paired together. The Dead End kids have larger parts as the plot concentrates on them rather than in the older folks.In a way it's curious how arson was used in the same way some scrupulous landlords did in later years right here in New York. It was the quickest way to turn a property around never considering the social problems it created. In today's climate with so many guns around there is a new reality. The young kids of the story seemed mere pranksters rather than criminals. How times change!

Randy_D A sequel to Angels With Dirty Faces in name only, The Angels Wash Their Faces suffers somewhat from the usual shenanigans of the Dead End Kids. As a matter of fact, with the presence of the Dead End Kids and Ann Sheridan this should have been treated as an actual sequel to Angels With Dirty Faces, at least for continuity's sake.Speaking of Ann Sheridan, she is the one true shining light of this movie. To paraphrase a cliché, Ann Sheridan could read from a phone book for two hours and I would buy the DVD!Another virtue of this movie is the chemistry between Ann Sheridan and Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately , this aspect of the film is kept too far in the background. For a better example of the Sheridan-Reagan duo I would recommend Juke Girl or Kings Row.