The Public Enemy
The Public Enemy
NR | 23 April 1931 (USA)
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Two young Chicago hoodlums, Tom Powers and Matt Doyle, rise up from their poverty-stricken slum life to become petty thieves, bootleggers and cold-blooded killers. But with street notoriety and newfound wealth, the duo feels the heat from the cops and rival gangsters both. Despite his ruthless criminal reputation, Tom tries to remain connected to his family, however, gang warfare and the need for revenge eventually pull him away.

Reviews
Rijndri

Load of rubbish!!

SoftInloveRox

Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

Supelice

Dreadfully Boring

Allison Davies

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

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DennisHinSF

Just saw this today on TCM - the restoration of the movie is absolutely fantastic. It looks like it could have been filmed yesterday (except for the clothes, hair, cars, etc.) It is really wonderful to see a masterpiece like this in such pristine condition. Cagney is charisma personified, and this film has the total look and feel of Warner Bros. economic filming style. This is a perfect film - don't miss it.

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zardoz-13

William Wellman's classic, Pre-Code Era, gangster yarn "The Public Enemy" made a star of James Cagney after he had appeared a year earlier as a tough-talking, gut-toting bad man in "Doorway to Hell" (1931) with Lew Ayers. Wellman and Oscar-nominated scenarists Kubec Glasmon and John Bright, who adapted their screenplay from their unpublished novel "Beer and Blood," along with Harvey Thew of "She Done Him Wrong," chronicle the rise and fall of scrappy Tom Powers as a mobster during the Prohibition Era. As it turns out, Glasmon and Bright were Chicago natives, and the story goes that Bright witnessed Al Capone having two associates beaten with baseball bats at a banquet. Meantime, Warner Brothers attached a proviso to Wellman's criminal melodrama: ""It is the ambition of the authors of 'The Public Enemy' to honestly depict an environment that exists today in a certain strata of American life, rather than glorify the hoodlum or the criminal. While the story of 'The Public Enemy' is essentially a true story, all names and characters appearing herein, are purely fictional." Ironically, just as Cagney and Lew Ayers swapped roles in "Doorway to Hell," Cagney wound him replacing his co-star Edward Woods who had been originally cast as Tom Powers.Born into a blue-collar, Irish-American, working class, Chicago family, Tom gravitated to the wrong side of the track early in his life with his friend Matt Doyle (Edward Woods), while his older, more respectable brother, Mike (Donald Cook of "Safe in Hell") adhered to the straight and narrow, eventually enlisting for Uncle Sam for make 'the world safe for democracy' in the Great War. Tom and Mike entered the rackets at an early age, working as underlings for the despicable Putty Nose (Murray Kinnell of "Grand Hotel") who uses them but never treats them with respect. Afterward. Tom and Matt take a job with Paddy Ryan to act as enforcers to see that Ryan's booze was bought. Wellman and his writers show how our young hoodlums were forged in the crucible of their poverty-stricken, slum-ridden environment. Eventually, Putty Nose pays the ultimate price for his treachery. Anyway, Tom ascends into the rackets as a bootlegger and brings home wads of dough for his mother, Ma (Beryl Mercer of "Cavalcade"), but Mike refuses to let his mother take Tom's blood money. Cagney's performance as an audacious, confident, murderous, mean-spirited gangster is terrific. One of the early scenes after he has grown up was recycled in Sergio Leone's "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." Tom enters a gun shop and asks to see some revolvers. The obliging sales clerk accommodates him and is genuinely surprised when Tom loads the proffered guns and holds him up. "The Public Enemy" bristles with action galore, and our protagonist takes up with Gwen Allen (Jean Harlow of "Red Dust") and they are seen together in public. Despite the violence that gangsters generate with their tommy guns, "The Public Enemy" is remembered not only for Cagney, but also when he rams a grapefruit into Harlow's face. "The Public Enemy" ranks as a seminal crime film, but this Warner Brothers release followed a similar film "Little Caesar" with Edward G. Robinson as a small-time enforcer who shoots his way to the top of the underworld. These two films with their 'crime does not pay' theme ignited controversy with religious leaders who felt that Hollywood sought to glamorize criminals. The ending with Tom swathed in bandages after he entered a speak easy and blasted it out toe-to-toe with rival mobsters is chilling stuff. Unforgettable is the only way to adequately describe the scene where Tom Powers smashes a grapefruit into Gwen's face. Initially, "The Public Enemy" qualifies as a must-see movie that never wears out its welcome at 83 minutes.

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Antonius Block

Cagney is something special in this film, an early gangster and bootlegging movie that was made in 1931, while Prohibition was still the law (it ended in 1933). The way he wears his many hats, the way he talks, and the way he playfully bumps his fist into someone's face as a sign of respect is all truly iconic. He is great in scenes of pure evil, the most famous of which has him smashing a grapefruit in a lover's face for not serving him alcohol for breakfast. There are several others though - spitting beer in a bartender's face for selling a competitor's product, killing a horse for having thrown and killed his boss, killing a guy who had betrayed him years ago, 'Putty Nose', without remorse, shocking even his partner, and slapping a woman for seducing and sleeping with him the night before while he was drunk. The seduction is clearly pre-Code as there is no doubt what's happening, but it's far from erotic, and more of an indication of the depths to which he's sinking before his ultimate end.And yet, despite all this, and despite the warnings that Warner Bros. put at the beginning and ending of the film, to the point that they were not trying to glorify gangsters, we somehow still care about Cagney, and as much or more so than his upright and moral brother, who dutifully goes off to WWI, doesn't take crooked money, and tries to set him straight. There seems to be little threat that he's going to be arrested, it's rival gangs that threaten him, not the police (which is perhaps telling to the sentiment of what was going on in Chicago and other cities at the time), but we don't want to see him gunned down.The rest of the cast is decent but mostly in the background, even Jean Harlow, who is actually a bit ghoulish as one of Cagney's love interests. Joan Blondell is frankly better, and says a lot with her eyes as his partner's girlfriend. The only poor bit of casting was Leslie Fenton, he is not believable as big mob boss 'Nails' Nathan. The action is all a bit over-the-top, and I'm not that big a fan of the modern gangster film, but this one has that sense of being historical and classic, and as such was entertaining. It's also definitely worth watching just to see Cagney.

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callumthompson1

A violence both gritty and fused to ignite the darker side of our imagination with black humour that still even though made back in 1931 still pervades the near nullified scruples of today's audience. This is The Public Enemy a landmark crime film directed by William "Wild Bill" Wellman who from the outset brings the streets and the times through social-realist montages showing a harsh environment which Tom Powers, Cagney's first notch on the eternal bedpost is born to.James Cagney dances across the screen with a presence that would turn early sound era acting into an art form. His character you could almost say is at first a victim of circumstance originally lead astray, but his fiendish nature soon rises to the fore in a poetically disturbing revenge scene where Tom Powers offs a childhood acquaintance who begs for his life to no avail, a scene where the most disturbing violence happens off screen in our minds.The Public Enemy which appears in an episode of The Sopranos is a stand- up film of any genre featuring all the now trademark elements of the gangster picture above all it's doomed anti-hero who in a climatic shoot out we see walking through the mean streets in the rain to violent redemption, worth mentioning that Cagney walks right into the camera his face filling the screen, a sequence which would also be I think replicated to a greater realised effect in Angels With Dirty Faces.

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