As with The Front Page, a demanding, blustering boss (Pat O'Brien) is about to lose his best man (James Cagney). As with His Girl Friday, there are romantic entanglements, but this time it is the male lead who must choose between two suitors. Cagney is wooed by unhappily married Gloria (Helen Vinson), who sees him as her ticket back to the States. But the more glamorous choice is radiant Lee Donley (Anne Sheridan), a saloon singer and card cheat of dubious character.
Sheridan's character seems to have been the prototype for Lauren Bacall's in To Have and Have Not (1944). Like Bacall, Sheridan's assets as a nightclub singer are mostly physical, but she acts with poise and confidence. She exchanges stinging one-liners and comebacks with Cagney and Vinson, making the dialogue the best part of the film. Cagney, ever the scrappy tough guy, is in his element. Andy Devine of Stagecoach fame, the only man who can talk off-key, provides welcome supporting comic relief.
O'Brien gives a one-note performance, however, lacking his usual chemistry with Cagney. The two Warners stars made ten films together, including Ragtime (1981) and the 1938 classic Angels with Dirty Faces. Part of the problem with the performance of O'Brien is with his character. The reason for his antipathy towards Sheridan is never understood, and his "bull in a china shop" personality makes him dislikable.
Also disappointing is the Latin American stereotypes, complete with lazy, corruptible field workers, a toadying, incompetent police chief, and an overweight, amiable revolutionist (George Tobias). In a similar role, Tobias lacks the menace of Alfonso Bedoya as Gold Hat in The Treasure of the Sierra Madres (1948), or the stubborn courage of Thomas Gomez as Poncho in Ride the Pink Horse (1947). Future Superman George Reeves plays Sancho, one of Tobias' confederates.
But while Torrid Zone does not rank as one of the best Warner Bros films from the 1940s, the dialogue nonetheless makes it a good vehicle for the talents of Cagney and Sheridan.