After seventy years, The Public Enemy still packs a punch!
Along with early gangster movies Scar Face and Little Caesar this social commentary flick was released in the early ‘30s, but it is superior to either, and probably all gangster films which have followed.
Purporting to be a public service by the studio to reveal the truth of the gangster menace to society, these films in fact glamorized the gangster, especially as portrayed by the one and only Jimmy Cagney, and made him a hero to millions of Americans, myself included.
Starring as Tom Powers, a police officer’s son who becomes a petty criminal and later a crime lord, Jimmy Cagney pulls out all the stops and delivers an electrifying performance.
Tom is first shown as a delinquent boy, along with his friend Matt. The two boys are schooled in petty crime by their fence Puttynose (Murray Kinnell).
By this time, WWI has broken out and Prohibition is not far behind. Tom and Matt go into the liquor business. Tom’s elder brother comes back from the war and refuses to join in a drink with Tom and their Ma at the old homestead. "I know what’s in that keg. Beer and blood. The blood of men."
The next morning takes place the infamous grapefruit scene where Tom rubs a grapefruit half in the face of his moll, Kitty, (Mae Clark).
Tom goes from one exploit to another, he catches up with his old mentor Puttynose, who left them holding the bag earlier. Tom shoots him to death. By this time, a gang war has broken out, between Paddy Ryan’s gang and Schemer Burns’ gang. Tom and Matt get ambushed by a machine-gun. Matt goes down but Tom gets away. He robs a couple of .38s from a pawnshop and has it out with Burns’ gang. Tom wins the gunfight, but is severely wounded. His family visits him in the hospital, and he reconciles himself with his brother and mother.
But Schemer Burns has one last trick. He kidnaps Tom, swathed like a mummy in bandages, from the hospital. Paddy offers to quit the rackets if Burns will return Tom. Return Tom he does, but bullet riddled and standing at his mother’s front door, still wrapped like a mummy. Brother Mike answers the door and Tom falls face first, dead, onto the floor.
The violence in this film is more suggested than overt. It takes place off camera and that makes it more potent than the more usual style of graphic violence we see today.
The movie is a low bucks Warner Bros. Production, but don’t let that stop you. See this movie and you will know why I call Jimmy Cagney "The One and Only." Five stars.
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