There are risks you take when you create a character of such menace as Buck Adams' albino madman, Simon Legure in Public Enemy, that you begin craving his presence like some sort of sugar fix. A scene without Legure is like a day without some creep getting wasted by a Magnum.

Legure is of the new breed of cinema bad guy: the glassy-eyed Euro-punk greaseball who dresses out of the Zorro catalogue and is disposed to hiring skinhead goons to do his dirty work. This feature hangs by the threads of Legure's tenuous composure, black belt sarcasm and wardrobe (Adams went so far to bleach his hair and eyebrows for this role). If he isn't around to hold a gun to his babe's (Carol Cummins) head and smart-mouth her while she goes down on him, then it just seems like standard adult video business.

In real time, Public Enemy is pretty much a good cowboy-cop shoot 'em up (nice special effects) with the revenge motif. Legure sets out to get warring black factions to knock one another off so he can control some drug territory, while cop Ray Victory sets out to nail him for wasting his partner. A hard-driving music score, however, doesn't overwhelm an obvious sexual distraction: that some of the sex is garden variety bedroom filler: Victory/Cummins, Michael/Powers, twice each. Twice each is a no-no, but some of the erotic segments elicit heat.

Outstanding acting performances from Cummings, Adams, Victory and company, great photography and hefty action sequences beg to be underscored by more consistently provocative sexual oomph. All these factors in consideration, Adams still comes pretty close to creating one of the best video features this industry has seen to date.