The Public Enemy

If there are to be gangster pictures, let them be like The Public Enemy, hard-boiled and vindictive almost to the point of burlesque.

Still a classic of the gangster genre, showing neither glorifying the life nor pulling its punches.

There's no lace on this picture. It's raw and brutal. It's low-brow material given such workmanship as to make it high-brow.

Cagney's energy and Wellman's gutsy direction carry the day, counteracting the moralistic sentimentality of the script and indelibly etching the star on the memory as a definitive gangster hero.

Contrary to popular opinion, the best moment in the film isn't when Jimmy Cagney shoves a grapefruit in his girlfriend's face.

Now a classic, this is the movie in which Cagney famously crams a grapefruit into Mae Clarke's face.

In the first depression-era films of the mob rats blasting their way to big screen glory like Molotov cocktails, Cagney’s Tom Powers was the most magnificent of the new breed of machine gun-toting anti-hero.

Cagney is so good here, in fact, that the picture would still be worth a look even if it were otherwise awful.

It's clear that in 1930's Hollywood, villainous activities must have strict repercussions, but the blaring disclaimer at the close only lessens the impact.

The approach is direct and unpretentious, the pace is brisk, the whole thing lasts eighty-four minutes and it has more in it than a half-dozen of those lethargic three-hour-plus epics we get nowadays.