Although innocent, reporter Frank Ross (James Cagney) is found guilty of murder and is sent to jail. While his friends at the newspaper try to find out who framed him, Frank gets hardened by prison life and his optimism turns into bitterness. He meets fellow-inmate Stacey (George Raft) and they decide to help each other.

Rather than be the good guy ("G Men") or the bad guy ("Public Enemy"),here we have Cagney as an innocent newspaper reporter framed and then sent to prison, where he becomes a little bit hardened. Maybe not quite a bad guy, but not really the good guy, either. It is a nice transformation, and an interesting commentary on prison life.

I am not very familiar with George Raft (I actually know him more from reading Mafia history than from film),but if he is like he is here in other films, I need to see more George Raft.

Investigative reporter Frank Ross (James Cagney) writes a take down story on crooked D.A. Jesse Hanley who is running for governor. He gets kidnapped and framed by Hanley for a drunk driving incident which killed 3 people. He is sentenced to 20 years of hard labor but expects to be vindicated. He befriends lifer inmate Hood Stacey (George Raft). It's a long fight for freedom.

There is great work from Cagney and Raft. It's a solid crime prison WB drama. It is plenty brutal but not always realistic. One could pull the little threads but that wouldn't be the point. It's a popcorn flick.

Even with such newer items as Brubaker and the Shawshank Redemption, Each Dawn I Die still holds up rather well if in fact it's a bit dated.

One has to remember that a film like Each Dawn I Die was made under "the Code" and a whole range of issues about prison life could not be dealt with and if so, only extremely subtly.

Still both James Cagney and George Raft give solid performances. Cagney is great in everything and Raft is in his gangster milieu so it's no stretch for him.

There's a great supporting cast of familiar Warner Brothers faces to support the two leads. I'd pay special attention to Stanley Ridges as the stir-crazy Muller and John Wray as Pete Kassock the sadistic prison guard. One of the issues not discussed is gay sex in prison. But read that dimension into Ridges's concern for buddy Louis Jean Heydt who Wray fatally injures and some of his actions become very explicable.

There is a political element here too. Cagney is a reporter who is investigating District Attorney Thurston Hall and his assistant Victor Jory. They concoct a frame for him that lands him in prison. Hall gets elected Governor and Jory gets to control the pardon board. Cagney goes before Jory to ask for a pardon and that scene itself is one of the best in the film.

A great film with a great cast, one of the best of Warner Brothers gangster products.