The Town and The Public Enemy

The Town and The Public Enemy

            These two movies are both very entertaining films and feature casts of hoodlum crime characters going from rags to riches and teetering on the edge of losing it all. In The Public Enemy  James Cagney stars as Tom Powers who turns his younger troublemaking days into a lavish life of crime at the height of alcohol prohibition in the city of Chicago. Ben Affleck's The Town features him in the lead role as Doug MaCray, the brains behind a group of successful Charlsetown thieves that plunder the nearby Boston's Banks and famous baseball establishments. While Tom wishes to continue on his criminal lifestyle at any means and is an eager and willing lackey to the mob boss' Patty Ryan and top dog in town til he winds up dead, Nails Nathan, Doug on the other hand is feeling like his luck is getting to close to running and not wishing to end up like his criminal minded father imprisoned for life and is looking for a way out when he starts falling for the one person that could give him and his accomplices up to the feds. The two movie's protagonists are more similar to the other films' best friend and partner in crime character sidekicks than to each other. In The Public Enemy, Matt Doyle, Tom's loyal friend, while too weak or unwilling to leave Powers and the gang on his own, seems more comfortable with the idea of settling down and living a simpler life, that which Doug MaCray desires and eventually succeeds in starting out on his own and leaving his past behind. Tom himself would find a compatriot in The Town's character of James, Doug's close childhood friend and criminal companion. The two characters revel in the heist are easy with killing in cold blood, quick on the triggers and see no other life for themselves than this one they have chosen of crime.  One very similar set of scenes between the movie involves the lead characters enlisting their partners to carry out personal vendettas in the homes of the unsuspecting persons that have done what they feel to be grievous wrongs towards them. In The Town after James goes further than Doug intended in doing bodily harm to some thugs that had harassed his new girlfriend the bank manager, James tells Doug that's the way he is, and if he doesn't want things done that way, done right , then don't ask for his help. A similar situation arises in The Public Enemy when Tom has to calm a shaken Matt Doyle after they follow home, "rough up" and shoot dead the small time crook Putty Nose for leaving them to fend for themselves after a botched robbery attempt years ago.