Amazon.com Essentials:
Director William Wellman (Wings), a World
War I veteran who turned his experiences in battle into an insistence
on unpretentious violence in his films, made Public Enemy a
particularly brutal account of the rise and fall of a monstrous
gangster (James Cagney). Cagney delivers one of the most famous
performances in film history as the snarling crook who--in one of the
film's most famous scenes--smashes a grapefruit into the face of Mae
Clarke. The film's a bit dated, but its action scenes still pack an
unusual wallop. --Tom Keogh
