"You're right about one thing. I don't want to be fair. I came here because I was told to go. I was told I had to talk to you. I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to waste 10 seconds on you. It makes me sick, Johnson, what you did. What you are turns my stomach."

"Sean Connery - Detective Inspector Johnson"

"Trevor Howard - Lieutenant Cartwright"

"You think you're a hard case? I was shouting and swearing when you still wet your bed."

"Every single thing I've ever felt, wanted to feel, in one moment - hitting him. I had to hit him again. Somehow, I didn't have any choice. I wanted what he could give me, sitting there, letting me hit him. I wanted that. He knew. He was saying, like, "Welcome home." I had to kill him."

"Nothing I have done can be one half as bad as the thoughts in your head. I wouldn't have your thoughts!"

"Vivian Merchant - Maureen Johnson"

"You've found it, haven't you? Something like the truth? Does it surprise you? Shock you? It's there in everyone. You must know that better than anyone. Surely you know that, eh? Of course, you think just everyone else, not you. I suppose, being a policeman, you have to. Twenty years thinking you're different. It must get to be a habit, thinking, "Thank God I'm not those other men." It's difficult. It's dangerous. But you're just the same, you see. In some ways you're one hell of a lot worse."

"The more I drink, the more sober I get."

"They wouldn't know Christmas from pancake bloody Tuesday."

"Ian Bannen - Kenneth Baxter"

"Here in a room like this one, you find something about yourself. Something like the truth."

"Vera Lewis - Mrs. Gray"

"John Hamilton - Judge"

"Robert Elliott - First Detective"

"Abner Biberman - Lefty"

"George Meeker - Harold Masters"

"Paul Kelly - Nick Brown"

"Elisabeth Risdon - Mrs. Sherman"

"Frank McHugh - Danny Green"

"Humphrey Bogart - George Hally"

"James Cagney - Eddie Bartlett"

"Jeffrey Lynn - Lloyd Hart"

"Priscilla Lane - Jean Sherman"

"Edward Keane - Pete Henderson"

"Gladys George - Panama Smith"

"Joseph Sawyer - Sergeant Pete Jones"

"And so the Eddie of this story joins the thousands and thousands of other Eddies throughout America. He becomes a part of a criminal army - an army that was born of a marriage between an unpopular law and an unwilling public. Liquor is the password in this army. And it's a magic password that spells the dollar sign as it spreads from city to city, from state to state. The public is beginning to look upon the bootlegger as something of an adventuresome hero, a modern crusader who deals in bottles instead of battles. And so, because of a grotesque situation, this new kind of army grows and grows, always gaining new recruits who care nothing about tomorrow just so long as money is easy today."

"1924. By now, America is well-launched into an era of amazing madness. Bootlegging has grown from small, individual effort to big business embodying huge coalitions and combines. The chase after huge profits is followed closely by their inevitable partners: corruption, violence, and murder. A new and horrible tool appears - the tommy - a light, deadly wasp-like machine gun, and murder henceforth is parceled out in wholesale lots."

"1929. As the dizzy decade nears its end, the country is stock-market crazy. The great and the humble, the rich man and the working man, the housewife and the shopgirl, all take their daily flyer in the market. And no one seems to lose. Then like a bombshell comes that never-to-be-forgotten Black Tuesday, October 29, confusion spreads through the canyons of New York City's financial district and men stare wild-eyed at the spectacle of complete ruin. More than sixteen and a half million shares change hands in a single day of frenzied selling. The paper fortunes built up over the past few years crumble into nothing before this disaster which is to touch every man, woman, and child in America."

"Back in this country, the boys who had returned from overseas begin to find out that the world has moved on during the time they spent in France...Everywhere, things have changed but particularly in New York. The old Broadway is only a memory. Gone are many of the famous landmarks, for already, America is feeling the effects of Prohibition. There is a concentrated effort at readjustment to normal peacetime activities, but unemployment coming in the wake of the wartime boom is beginning to grip the country and the soldiers find their return to face - on a different front - the same old struggle, the struggle to survive."

"Finally comes the national referendum on repeal. Tired of years of violence, corruption, and loss of personal liberty, Americans go to the polls and overwhelmingly rout the dry forces. After thirteen years, Prohibition is dead, leaving in its wake a criminal element used to wealth and power but unable for the most part to cope with a new determination by an aroused public that law and order should once more reign."

"I always say, when you got a job to do, get somebody else to do it."

"America's Most Colorful Era!"

"The land of the free gone wild! The heyday of the hotcha! The shock-crammed days G-men took ten whole years to lick!"

"1920 . . . Bootleggers, Jazz, Babe Ruth, Speakeasies, Jack Dempsey, Dames, Molls, Easy Living - Quick Dying . . . the torrid . . . blazing . . . wild . . . lush . . . lurid - ROARING TWENTIES ! ! !"

"Ron Perlman - Nino "Izzy" Paolozzi"

"Christina Hendricks - Blanche"

"Oscar Isaac - Standard Gabriele"

"Ryan Gosling - The Driver"

"Carey Mulligan - Irene"