Outside the Law (1930)

A year before breaking out as a star in his own right with an iconic lead performance in Mervyn LeRoy’s Little Caesar, Edward G. Robinson made an indelible mark on Browning’s filmography in the director’s second sound picture, a loose remake of Browning’s own 1920 silent film of the same name. Here, Robinson steals the show as Cobra Collins, a scowling Los Angeles gangster and the counterpart to Lon Chaney’s Black Mike Sylva. When the rival crook Fingers O’Dell (Owen Moore) and his moll, Connie Madden (Mary Nolan), successfully plot to execute a lucrative robbery in Collins’s territory and refuse to split the loot with the gang boss, they’re forced into hiding in an apartment-bound domestic setup that chafes Madden’s outlaw sensibility—until a final confrontation with Collins brings the simmering melodrama to an explosively sordid climax.