"A contender for one of the best films of the year"
Michael Mann has almost become synonymous with crime drama. He's a masterful orchestrator of intelligent and action packed thrillers that tell compelling stories and feature rich character development. His work in the genre has become so influential, that even Christopher Nolan has admitted that Mann's 'Heat' was an inspiration for the opening bank heist sequence in last summer's 'The Dark Knight.' Mann's films also feature great attention to detail, providing a sense of realism to the worlds he presents to us. If there were one element he still hasn't quite got the knack for it's biographical stories. Just as 'Ali' failed to provide great insight into the iconic fighter and 'The Insider' never illustrated what really made '60 Minutes' producer Lowell Bergman tick (though Russell Crowe's performance as whistle-blowerr Jeffrey Wigand is underrated), 'Public Enemies' never gives us a chance to get to know John Dillinger.
Mann's film is an adaptation of Bryan Burrough's book "Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI" and following the footsteps of Laurence Tierney, Warren Oates and Robert Conrad is Johnny Depp as Dillinger. Depp's performance sets the right tone as an anti-hero who when we first meet him is orchestrating a prison break with his associates after smuggling guns into the Indiana State Penitentiary. This is 1933, during the height of the Great Depression and Dillinger and his cohorts are eager to return to the lavish lifestyle that being a bank robber provides. Depp is not only believable as a man who is loyal to the gang he commands, but manages to capture Dillinger's charm and the physicality he demonstrated during heists that earned him the nickname "jackrabbit". The physicality is seen during a bank heist early on that makes no attempt to out-do 'Heat' and the charm is playfully evident in his wooing of half French, half Native American Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard) a coat check girl that catches his eye in a nightclub. Over dinner, she takes notice of the patrons staring at her and her cheap dress, because "a girl like me doesn't belong in a place like this." "They only think about where a person comes from when they should be interested in where they are going," he replies. "And where are you going?" she asks. Dillinger's reply of "Anywhere I want" suggests that here is a man who is not only going to win the girl he just met, but chooses not to live by the rules of life.
Tell that to the FBI, who Dillinger's exploits have made a mockery of. Bureau Director J. Edgar Hoover (a restrained, but pitch perfect Billy Crudup) is sick of the media sensation that Dillinger has become and sees him as a criminal rather than the 'Robin Hood' type hero the public perceives him to be. He appoints by-the-book G-Man Melvin Purvis to run the Bureau's Chicago office and hunt down Dillinger who is slowly becoming public enemy number one. Christian Bale has an uncanny ability to make two-dimensional characters obsessed with control fascinating. Purvis' sense of duty and belief in the crime fighting tactics of the FBI is interesting, but oddly enough the character is an enigma. There is no insight provided into what really makes the man tick, if he has a family life or how he copes with such a demanding job. The comparisons to Al Pacino's Vincent Hanna in 'Heat' are unavoidable, but even a short look into the man's life outside of the FBI would have been helpful since the real Purvis died in an apparent suicide in 1960.
'Public Enemies' is indeed not as epic as 'Heat' which featured the tag line "A Los Angeles Crime Saga" on its poster. Like the crew of Robert DeNiro's Neil McCauley, Dillinger's gang is made up of an assortment of familiar and not-so-familiar characters like "Red" Hamilton (Jason Clarke), "Pete" Pierpont (David Wenham), Alvin Karpis (Giovanni Ribisi), Homer Van Meter (Stephen Dorff) and Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham). Where Mann gave each member of McCauley's crew individual stories and screentime to make them dimensional, we barely get to know Dillinger's gang. Only Clarke as Hamilton seems to have any real presence, serving as Dillinger's advisor and conscious. Even power players like the legendary Frank Nitti (Bill Camp) are glossed over and we are never given a sense of how Dillinger's exploits really put a squeeze on the Chicago empire he built with Al Capone.
The same can be said for Purvis and his team. Dillinger makes a mockery of the Bureau's pursuit of him in such a fashion that Purvis pleads for Hoover to bring in outside help. This leads to the introduction of Charles Winstead and Gerry Campbell, played by Stephen Lang and Matt Craven. Lang is actually a bright spot as an aging lawman, with a seen-it-all glare who is willing to take extreme measures, but unfortunately he's surrounded by buffoons. The authorities are given the slip by Dillinger or evaded so many times that they look ridiculous. As Burrough's book suggests, the pursuit of Dillinger was also the story of how the FBI really became what it as well as Hoover's legacy. Unfortunately some of the G-Men are portrayed as cowards rather than investigators as when one of them physically torments Billie during an interrogation to the point where she wets herself.
Cotillard makes a fine photographic match with Depp, but there is little chemistry when they interact. Except when he initially sweeps her off her feet, there's no reason for us to believe she's really in love with him and she comes across as being mesmerized by the money he throws around. What's great about DeNiro's developing relationship with girlfriend Amy Brenneman in 'Heat' is that not only does she initially approach him, but he discovers a part of himself he never knew he had. Depp finds himself in a similar situation as DeNiro concerning getting apprehended by the authorities, but it doesn't feel as tragic because of his lack of a deep connection with Cotillard.
Depp and Bale don't sit down for a cup of coffee like Pacino and DeNiro, but they do come face to face, only separated by prison bars after his capture. They have some nice banter over watching a man die where Depp reveals that watching life fade from a man's eyes "can keep you up for nights". "And what keeps you up at night, Mr. Dillinger?" "Coffee". It's a nice exchange, but there's no sense of respect between the two like Pacino and DeNiro had.
Though 'Public Enemies' is a crime thriller, the flourishes of action and suspense are few and far between. Dillinger escapes from prison not once, but twice within the film and those sequences provide tension only because they feel like they are leading to something more. A shootout that's the result of a botched robbery plays better, but the highlight of the picture has to be the confrontation and gun battle with the FBI at the Little Bohemia Lodge in a Wisconsin forest.
Mann has become quite fond of digital photography and as he illustrated in 'Collateral' and 'Miami Vice', it can be a powerful tool for nighttime shooting. It looks like he's switched from the Viper to the Sony CineAlta F23 which works well at low light levels, but with daytime sequences its another story. More often than not, the shots have a very digital appearance and the inaccurate skintones of the actors can be distracting. He does make excellent use of it to present shots where both the back and foregrounds are in focus that with conventional film photography would need a split diopter lens.
If there is one dramatic sequence in the film that does work rather well thematically and really stands out, it's Dillinger getting a little inspiration from Clark Gable during a viewing of the 1934 gangster picture 'Manhattan Melodrama." On his way to the electric chair Gable tells an inmate it's best to "die like the way you lived". Not only is Depp's reaction perfect, but the sequence serves as a touch of foreshadowing.
It probably seems unfair to compare 'Public Enemies' to 'Heat', but the latter followed a structure and presented characters and situations in a fashion that sucked you in without you realizing it. You didn't know which side to root for, cops or criminals, because you cared about them both. The opposing sides in 'Public Enemies' feature characters who are interesting, but not enough to really care who ends up on top and how.
Overall: One of Michael Mann's greatest film yet along with Heat and a must watch for fans of Michael Mann.
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