The Public Enemy

“All his life he took what he wanted...Why not women?”

Tom Powers (James Cagney) grows up poor in a Chicago slum and wants more than the slum will ever hand him. With his friend Matt Doyle (Edward Woods), he moves from petty theft into bootlegging, and the money arrives along with the attention of the police and rival gangsters. William A. Wellman keeps one tie running through all of it, Tom's older brother Mike (Donald Cook), a straight-living man who watches where Tom's money comes from.