Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Rexanne It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Cristal The movie really just wants to entertain people.

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.

Larry41OnEbay-2 When it was new, back in 1931 it was another time, with lots of issues, depression, prohibition and crime. Cagney was a small time NY actor looking for a break, and the director Wellman wanted a break-out performance. Actor Pat O'Brien used to describe his friend Cagney as "just a dancer gone wrong." But Cagney knew tough, in his autobiography he described growing up in the NY streets where the kids tossed bricks at each other, and sometimes the cops when they got bored. But where did this movie story come from? It turns out, two former hoodlums met when they went into the drugstore business in Chicago during prohibition and they heard a lot of bragging from their gangster clientèle and witnessed enough they decided to write a book about it and they called it BEER AND BLOOD. The cinema going public would have recognized several stories from the headlines that made it into this script, one was of a gas truck being used to smuggle beer another was the tale of a horse that caused the accidental death of a real-life hood named "Nails" Morton, finally a third event involving gangster Earl "Hymie" Weiss and an omelet. The phrase Public Enemy which is what Warner Bros. changed the title to, goes all the way back to Roman times but was popularized in Chicago by Frank Loesch, then chairman of the Chicago Crime Commission a prosecutor who stated he had a list of the outstanding hoodlums, known murderers but lacked the evidence to prove it. The FBI liked using this list so much they stole the idea and created their famous ten most wanted including at the time: John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Bonnie and Clyde and "Scarface" Al Capone. The producer of the film decided to switch directors when William "WILD BILL" Wellman said, "Let me make it and I'll make the toughest dam gangster movie of them all." Then just before filming started they switched roles for the lead actors. Cagney had been cast as the supporting role until the writers and director saw a clip of THE MILLIONAIRE, an earlier film where Cagney's direct energy and fast delivery stole the movie and he was only in one scene and that was playing an insurance salesman! Everyone realized with the proper handling this skyrocket could create a firestorm of excitement and he does. Just watch Cagney's darting eyes, his body language and winks and that famous little jab or pulled punch of his. Cagney got that famous movie mannerism from his father who died from alcoholism at the age of 42, and Jimmy was just 19 causing him to drop out of school to support his family and put his brother thru medical school. Oddly, that is the exact opposite of what his character does in tonight's film. When the movie making was over, Cagney humbly said in an interview, "Movie stars, they come and they go with an exception now and then. Two more years and I'll be looking for a job on the stage again – maybe hoofing. What's the use of kidding myself." So he quit Hollywood and took his family back to New York. But Jack Warner saw the box office lines around the blocks of the theaters playing PUBLIC ENEMY and knew they struck gold, quickly he tripled Cagney's pay and begged him to come back. The rest as they say is history. Along with Warner Brothers' earlier hit Little Caesar made the year before and Scarface made just a year after, this movie set the tone for the popular gangster dramas of the Depression period, gritty and brutally realistic, and Cagney's performance established him as the essence of the ruthless, hair-trigger hoodlum – scary but fascinating. And he made it look fun because he was having a blast doing it. So much so, that the censor board made the studio add warnings and disclaimers at the beginning and end of the film. Also in the end credits you'll see Edward Woods billed over Cagney because that's the way they were originally hired.A hard-luck moll played by Mae Clarke may have been uncredited in this film, but her performance boosted her career so much that later that same year she became more famous for the attention of another monster, FRANKENSTEIN.For added realism director Wellman asked actor Donald Cook to really hit Cagney during a fight scene, which he did, knocking out two teeth, but Jimmy stayed in character.The New York Times upon its April 1931 release, called it "just another gangster film, weaker than most in its story, stronger than most in its acting; Woods and Cagney give "remarkably lifelike portraits of young hoodlums" and "Beryl Mercer as Tom's mother, Robert Emmett O'Connor as a gang chief, and Donald Cook as Tom's brother, do splendidly.Three particular scenes were cut when it was re-released after the Production Code was put into effect. 1) The scene with the gay tailor was, pardon the expression trimmed. 2) The scene of a couple waking up in bed together and rolling around having fun was shortened. 3) Showing Cagney being seduced when hiding out in a woman's apartment.And finally on a recent viewing I noticed a sound effect during a spanking scene that sounds so real I don't think it was faked, but still it got past the stinkers at the production code. This film was added to the National Film Registry in 1998.

grantss Very entertaining, even when compared to modern gangster movies. Good, solid plot, though overly moralistic and preachy, especially with the opening and closing frames including messages from the producers about how the public should be preventing hoodlums from flourishing.Good direction and editing, the movie flows along at a good, constant pace and doesn't drift. The movie is made by the acting of James Cagney, however. He turns in a superb performance: gripping, edgy, gritty, believable and dark. A pity that some of the other acting in the movie was pretty poor. Only the moralistic tone and supporting performances prevent this from being a classic.

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.