Peeling back the myths surrounding the most infamous outlaw since Jesse James, Public Enemy #1 unravels the story of a charismatic stickup man, whose wild antics and flamboyant disdain for the law captured the imagination of Hollywood, the mainstream press and millions of ordinary Americans. The film chronicles John Dillinger's life from his youthful first brush with the law to his death a decade later in a hail of bullets. It explores how, at a time of great hardship, Americans felt more admiration for a daring criminal than their seemingly ineffectual institutions of government. And it shows how FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover was determined to turn Dillinger's story into a morality tale in which law enforcers are the victors and crime doesn't pay.