Plot
Foreword · It is the ambition of the authors of "The Public Enemy" to honestly depict an environment that exists today in a certain strata of American life, rather than glorify the hoodlum or the criminal. While the story of "The Public Enemy" is essentially a true story, all names and characters appearing herein, are purely fictional.
As youngsters in 1900s Chicago, Irish-Americans Tom Powers and his lifelong friend Matt Doyle engage in petty theft, selling stolen items to "Putty Nose". Putty Nose persuades them to join his gang on a fur warehouse robbery, assuring them he will take care of them if anything goes wrong. When Tom is startled by a taxidermied bear, he shoots it, alerting the police, who kill gang member Larry Dalton. When they go to Putty Nose for help, they find he has fled.
Tom's straitlaced older brother Mike Powers tries and fails to talk Tom into giving up crime. Tom keeps his activities secret from his doting mother. When the United States enters World War I in 1917, Mike enlists in the Marines. Their mother pleads with Tom not to do the same, and he promises, staying behind.
In 1920, with Prohibition about to go into effect, Paddy Ryan recruits Tom and Matt as beer "salesmen" (enforcers) in his bootlegging business. He allies himself with noted gangster Samuel "Nails" Nathan. As the bootlegging business becomes ever more lucrative, Tom and Matt flaunt their wealth.
Mike finds out that his brother's money comes not from politics, as Tom claims, but from bootlegging, and declares that Tom's success is based on nothing more than "beer and blood". Tom retorts in disgust: "Your hands ain't so clean. You killed and liked it. You didn't get them medals for holding hands with them Germans."
Tom and Matt acquire girlfriends, Kitty and Mamie, respectively. Tom eventually tires of Kitty; when she complains once too often, he angrily pushes half a grapefruit into her face. He then drops her for Gwen Allen. At a restaurant on the night of Matt's wedding reception to Mamie, Tom and Matt recognize Putty Nose and follow him home. Begging for his life, Putty plays a song on the piano that he had entertained Tom and Matt with when they were children. Tom shoots him in the back, while a dazed Matt watches.
Tom gives his mother a large wad of money, but Mike rejects the gift. Tom tears up the banknotes and throws them in his brother's face. "Nails" Nathan dies in a horse-riding accident, prompting Tom to buy the horse and shoot it. A rival gang headed by "Schemer" Burns takes advantage of the disarray resulting from Nathan's death, precipitating a gang war.
Paddy gets his members holed up in an apartment while he nervously leaves to work a deal with Burns, somehow, as they are outnumbered. He takes their guns and money away hoping this will keep them in hiding. But he is seen leaving the place by a Burns' gang member. Later in the night Paddy's girlfriend has her way with Tom, when he is drunk and helpless. In the morning Tom, disgusted, leaves with his loyal friend Matt following him. Matt is immediately gunned down in a barrage of Tommy gun fire but Tom escapes narrowly. Furious, Tom robs a pair of .38s and single-handedly goes to settle scores with Burns and some of his men but is seriously wounded in the shootout and ends up in the hospital. When his mother, brother, and Matt's sister Molly come to see him, he reconciles with Mike and agrees to reform. However, Paddy drops at home later to warn Mike that Tom has been kidnapped by the Burns' mob from the hospital. He also gives Mike hope that he will bring Tom back somehow, with news that he has offered to quit and leave the racket to Burns, hoping that he would not kill Tom. Then during dinner, a gang member, presumably from Paddy's gang, telephones to tell an anxious Mike that Tom is returning from the hospital; their mother is overjoyed and begins preparing Tom's bedroom. When Mike answers a knock on the door, Tom's tied-up body is propped against it, and he falls dead onto the floor. The film closes with Mike getting up and walking slowly towards the motionless camera that is still on the floor continuing to frame the lifeless Tom. The end of Tom Powers is the end of every hoodlum. "The Public Enemy" is not a man, nor is it a character -- it is a problem that sooner or later we, the public, must solve. –Closing caption
