The Public Enemy

The Public Enemy-1931

In the early 1930's, Warner Bros. became well known for starting the now-famous gangster genre. They started this with two quintessential gangster films: Little Caesar, which mainstreamed what most audiences would think of when they hear 30's gangster films ("Now look here, see" type jokey gangsters, tommy-guns, etc.) and 1931's James Cagney starring film, The Public Enemy. While Little Caesar almost seems like a parody to today's standards, The Public Enemy stands up even to today's best in the genre.

Cagney is Tom Powers, who we see grow up into the business of organized crime in the seedy underbelly of Chicago. The film chronicles him from growing up with his friend Matt Doyle, selling cheap watches and giving away stolen goods to hitting it big as an adult during the Prohibition. Cagney learned to play Powers from growing up near gangsters and went on to make a living playing mobsters in many different classic Warner Bros. films. Cagney plays Powers with a very I-don't-give-a-crap attitude and shows this by killing childhood friends, shooting a horse and even infamously slamming a grapefruit into his girlfriends' face. 

The sheer violence and the guts of this film to deal with such subject matters before it was the norm makes this film stand along with today's standards and shows the influence that this film has had on everything from The Godfather to The Sopranos. This is made evident with the family structure of Powers. Powers has two families, his mob family and his actual family. His mob family is closely knit and takes care of each other, yet will save their own hides if it means sacrificing one of their friends. Yet in his actual family, there is shown a struggle between what is right and wrong with his brother Mike, a WWI Marine who just wants Tom to play by the rules and help take care of their mother. It is this dichotomy of family relationships that leads to the end of Tom, and brings this film's most greatest dramatic points and sets up future films' interest in the same topic.

Today, a great gangster film is considered by how much violence the gangster can  commit, or how many kilos he can distribute. We live in a world where Al Pacino's Scarface has become part of the rap culture lexicon and audiences will buy Joaquin Phoenix as a mob boss. But The Public Enemy shows just how this genre originated and quite frankly, does it better than anyone, save Scorsese or Tarantino, has been able to do it since. The Public Enemy helped create the mob movie over 75 years ago and stands as a testament that few have been able to match and shows that it is one of the best of its' kind and is a gem of its' genre.

Rating: B+