On Rotten Tomatoes , the film received a 100 % " Fresh " rating based on 29 reviews , with a weighted average of 8.41 / 10 . Andre Sennwald , who reviewed the film for '' The New York Times '' upon its April 1931 release , called it " just another gangster film at the Strand , weaker than most in its story , stronger than most in its acting , and , like most , maintaining a certain level of interest through the last burst of machine-gun fire " ; 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 . " '' Time '' magazine called '' The Public Enemy '' " well-told " and noted " Unlike '' City Streets '' , this is not a Hugoesque fable of gangsters fighting among themselves , but a documentary drama of the bandit standing against society . It carries to its ultimate absurdity the fashion for romanticizing gangsters , for even in defeat the public enemy is endowed with grandeur . " '' Variety '' called it " low-brow material given such workmanship as to make it high-brow " which attempts to " square everything with a foreword and postscript moralizing on the gangster as a menace to the public welfare . " A theatre in Times Square ran '' The Public Enemy '' 24 hours a day during its initial release . At the 4th Academy Awards , the film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Story , losing to '' The Dawn Patrol ''
4th Academy Awards
4th Academy Awards
The Public Enemy