This movie offers the quintessential Cagney, by the lamp post in the rain, a tense close up that signals the arrival of a star. It was only his third film, but what an impact he had. The movie would be great even if it came out today.<br /><br />Of course, James Cagney would have plenty of time to polish up his gangster image, his turn as Rocky Sullivan in "Angels With Dirty Faces" is one of my all time favorite characterizations. "The Public Enemy" allows both Cagney and Warner Brothers to sharpen up their story telling skills, but even for 1931, this is a powerful tale. Unlike 'Angels', boyhood friends Tom Powers and Matt Doyle both take up a life of crime as an answer to the easy way up and out of poverty. Told in crisply dated vignettes, the film progresses through the Depression and World War I as it offers Tom (Cagney) and brother Mike (Donald Cook) taking separate paths under the watchful eye of Ma Powers (Beryl Mercer).<br /><br />The movie has more than it's share of defining scenes, most viewers will identify with the Mae Clarke grapefruit smackeroo, but there are a lot more. The black cat crossing Putty Nose's (Murray Kinnell) path as the boys renew their acquaintance is just the best harbinger of bad luck, culminating in the off screen gunshot that screams revenge. It was Putty who taught the gangster trainees about honor and loyalty, but in reverse. Also, how about the quick exchange of a thousand dollars to bring a race horse to justice for accidentally killing mob benefactor Nails Nathan (Leslie Fenton). The coal chute cover for the rapid staccato of machine gun bullets was another inspired piece of work, culminating in the very real artistry of a skilled shooter taking it out on a cement wall.<br /><br />Following Tom's confrontation with the Schemer Burns gang, again off camera for the viewer to fill in the blanks, director William Wellman wryly uses Ma Powers to signal his final return home. With strange premonition, she utters - "You're comin' home, aintcha Tommy, to stay?" His arrival is one of the all time shocker finales of film history, a perfect dichotomy between the visual and the sound accompaniment to the strains of "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles". What an ending! <br /><br />Warner Brothers begins and ends this tale with a warning and an exhortation, signaling the public enemy as not a single man or character but a problem that the public must solve. Seventy five years later they could still be putting the same captions into their films, as each generation finds a way to deal with it's own brand of criminal enterprise. But here in the early days of sound cinema, James Cagney set a high mark that was ever rarely challenged for gangster supremacy on screen.