Movie Review: Public Enemies
In an obvious starring vehicle for Johnny Depp, Michael Mann’s attempt to paint John Dillinger in a somewhat folk hero light using Depp’s charm and acting talents is merely a borefest with no depth or interesting character development. Point of fact you can’t have a movie where the audience has to try and idenitfy with a killer and maniac. John Dillinger was not a Robin Hood and Mann’s visual prowess was not enough to make Public Enemies interesting,
Comparing it to De Palma’s Untouchables there was a clear line of bad versus good. Capone was painted bad while the main part of the movie revolved around Kevin Costner’s Elliot Ness and his band of Treasury Department cops trying to thwart Capone and his henchmen. Public Enemies almost tried to do the opposite making the film’s plot revolve more around Dillinger’s perspective and the FBI team led by Melvin Purvis’ (Christian Bale) newly fangled fledging FBI team sancted by J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) was to play second fiddle. There wasn’t even equal footing suggesting that Mann’s film was to lay on Depp’s shoulder’s alone.
However, again you can’t paint a hero and make an audience care about someone who was not that. Depp’s portrayal of Dillinger was not captivating nor was it interesting. “I’m John Dillinger, I rob banks, I like baseball, fast cars and you, what else do you need to know?” is a line he tells his lover Billie Freschette (Marion Cotillard). I guess Mann thought the same thing barely giving us a backstory on the character, there was a scar on the right side of his face, where did it come from? knife fight? prison? never was it mentioned. This is a small detail but stresses the point that a film that tried to give us all Dillinger in turn to give us more Depp but no depth. This leaves us uncaring about the film’s supposed “hero”. Bale’s Purvis suffered the same fate in terms of depth. When we first meet him he is chasing down Pretty Boy Floyd (Channing Tatum) and kills him from long range with a bolt rifle. Looking over his dead body we see a penetant man who dislikes shooting but there is never any explanation as to why. Bale’s performance seems uncomfortable most of the time presumably due to the fact he knows he doesn’t matter and that the film is Depp’s to role with.
Lack of depth isn’t the only thing that makes this movie uninteresting its Mann’s technique of trying to build tension. Slow transitions and long drawn out dialogues combined with characters in pain or weird scenes of staring, I felt like wanting to close my eyes and when they opened the film would be over. Technically the film dazzled and the 1930s filmed with HD cameras looked great but as we know technical isn’t enough to make the movie good, people who saw Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen would tell you the same thing.
Ultimately Depp’s first stinker was not his fault, his performance as Dillinger was fact and not a copy or impersonation of someone else’s gangster. That being said the story which had potential to be epic or equal in terms of both sides of the law like a 3:10 to Yuma was but that unfortunately wasn’t true. The film just didn’t have any juice to carry it. Sorry for Bale as well but it seems like he is never going to be comfortable unless he is growling in the bat suit, he is very one dimensional.
To conclude I would have much rather had seen all Depp as Dillinger and his whole biopic on screen then just one short frantic version of his life. On the other hand I much rather would have liked to see a film revolving around Purvis’ team not just manhunting Dillinger but how they tracked Pretty Boy Floyd and other criminals of the day, like a Tombstone or Wyatt Earp tale. The film was definitely a tale of two movies creating a conflict of interest in the story making it convuluded and confusing in terms of who we as the audience should care about.
Total Score: 4 out of 10
