He hated it for glorifying soulless murderers. He grew up in a town/near a town that had had a "visit" from the gang.
They killed the old bank guard for no reason, and then on the way out of town, saw a cop doing crossing guard duty. They stopped, called him over, and shot him dead, and continued on their way.
Wooowww.
Never, ever heard that.
The MSM really re-wrote history with that pair.
A taste of things to come.
At the time, it was the most horrible thing I'd ever seen in a movie, at least since (as a fifth- or sixth-grader) I saw White Heat on Saturday-afternoon TV. The scene where Cagney says "oh, ya want a little air, huh?" while pulling out his pistol and emptying it through the closed lid on the trunk in which one of his partners is imprisoned turned my stomach.