MOVIE · 1931

The Public Enemy

CrimeDrama84 min

Tom Powers grows up in Chicago’s slums and comes of age fast when Prohibition turns petty crime into a booming business. James Cagney is Tom, a sharp, volatile hoodlum who climbs from street theft to bootlegging with his boyhood friend Matt Doyle (Edward Woods) at his side. As money and notoriety pile up, so do police attention, rival gangs, and tension at home, where Tom keeps trying to hold onto his place in the family. Jean Harlow and Joan Blondell appear among the women drawn into his fast, violent orbit.