Public Enemies

Year: 2009
Running time: 140 minutes
Certificate: 15
Language: English
Screenplay: Ronan Bennett, Michael Mann, Ann Biderman
Director: Michael Mann
Starring: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard

John Dillinger: Confident audacity.

Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, the tale of legendary bank robber John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) and Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), the FBI agent given the task of taking him down is awash with authenticity. Clothes, architecture, cars, accents, everything is meticulously recreated to precisely ape 1933. Even the rat-a-tat-tat of the gunfire is accurately replicated in exact detail. For some reason I find difficult to pin down, it left me a little cold, despite its carefully crafted authenticity.

There is plenty here to like. Johnny Depp is on his usual fine form as Dillinger, playing the charismatic criminal with style to spare, entirely believably sweeping Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard) off her feet with a couple of lines: "I was raised on a farm in Moooresville, Indiana. My mama ran out on us when I was three, my daddy beat the hell out of me cause he didn't know no better way to raise me. I like baseball, movies, good clothes, fast cars, whiskey, and you... what else you need to know?" Christian Bale also impresses as Purvis, the FBI agent placed on Dillinger’s trail by Bureau founder J. Edgar Hoover himself (Billy Crudup). Even though Dillinger is supposedly the villain, it’s the cold-blooded Purvis who disturbs, tracking Dillinger with a relentless single-minded intensity, caring little for anyone caught in the crossfire of the ferocious gun battles. Dillinger is actually a far more likable character, Depp capturing the confidence and sheer audacity of the fast living bank robber beautifully, never more so than in the scene where he visits a police station to peruse the investigation into his own manhunt while the officers are all absorbed in a ball game.

Keeping an eye out for the Feds.

Mann films the action using cutting edge high quality digital cameras, and I wonder whether this is one of the things that turns me off. While the imagery is undeniably crystal clear and the soundtrack wonderfully sharp, it feels at times like you’re watching a very well made amateur production using handheld digital cameras. This is a little unfair of me to be honest (it is Michael Mann after all, not amateur by any stretch of the imagination), but it is honestly how it strikes me. While the intention would appear to have been to place the viewer in the thick of the action like never before, for me it lost something, something that makes film feel cinematic.

While Public Enemies is undeniably high quality, for some reason it failed to set my world alight. Still worth a watch though.

Score: 6/10

Ian at Empire rather over-rates it in my opinion, as does Roger Ebert.