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Johnny Depp might be impressing some critics with his version of John Dillinger, but ‘Public Enemies’ is in the ha’penny place when it comes to great gangster flicks. Here are 10 films to tempt your trigger finger on the remote

1 The Public Enemy (1931)You can watch this with nostalgia – oh, look, there’s James Cagney ramming the grapefruit in Mae Clarke’s face, there he is shot to pieces in the rain-washed gutter, and here he is wrapped up like a mummy, delivered to his mother’s door, dead as a nail. So what is a gangster? He’s a young hoodlum who makes it big and then he’s erased. The film closes on a stern warning message about how society must rid itself of these monsters! You can hear Cagney’s sneer: “Are you kidding?” The deepest appeal of this 74-minute study in insolence is that Cagney is cock of the walk. He gets clothes, cars, dames, wads of money. And don’t forget Cagney was going to play the nicer sidekick, with Edward Woods as the gang leader. Director William Wellman switched parts – he saw the insight: we love this guy we fear.