80
Metascore
18 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100The deepest appeal of this 74-minute study in insolence is that Cagney is cock of the walk.
- 100LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenLarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenCrime may not pay, but The Public Enemy was one of the first pictures to recognize that it sure can be exciting to watch.
- 89Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenAustin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenThis criminal tale excited audiences and landed the kinetic Cagney on the movie map. Now a classic, this is the movie in which Cagney famously crams a grapefruit into Mae Clarke’s face.
- 88Slant MagazineChris BarsantiSlant MagazineChris BarsantiThere’s little denying the power of Cagney’s presence, from the first moment he’s on screen, he radiates such a brash Fenian cockiness you can imagine kids at the time flocking out of the theater and cocking their caps just like him. It’s a performance so perfect in its intensity that any other quibbles about the film ultimately recede into insignificance.
- In William Wellman’s The Public Enemy, Cagney’s tommy-gun delivery and dancer’s grace make underworld life seductively enthralling.
- If there are to be gangster pictures, let them be like The Public Enemy, hard-boiled and vindictive almost to the point of burlesque.
- 70Chicago ReaderDave KehrChicago ReaderDave KehrTime hasn’t been terribly kind to this 1931 gangster drama, which suffers more than it should from the glitches of early sound. But James Cagney’s portrayal of a bootlegging runt is truly electrifying (he’d already made three films, but this one made him a star), and Jean Harlow makes the tartiest tart imaginable.
- 60IGNIGNWithout Cagney, this movie would still be memorable, but probably only as a minor footnote to the better gangster films to come. With Cagney's smart acting, this movie is a decent watch.