PUBLIC ENEMIES (2009)

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"I've been looking forward to this movie for 15 months... I hope Inglourious Basterds can pick up the pieces."

Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse than Transformers, this movie went and did its best to prove me wrong. Overall it was pretty decent. But decent isn't what I'm expecting from Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, and Micahel Mann. From the very first scene, it was the epitome of slow-moving. The prison breaks, the bank robberies, the shoot-outs, everything was shot in a way that seemed to take away from what was going on. But, then again, what other Michael Mann movie besides Heat doesn't? Even the subtle details were underexaggerated. Nothing about what made John Dillinger John Dillinger was accentuated in the least in the story. There was no mention of his flair for robbing banks or genius planning in escaping prison. He just always walked in and held up the manager, or conveniently grabbed a nearby prison gaurd as a hostage and walked out the front door. We didn't see how he carved the fake gun from a bar of soap and paint it black with smuggled shoe polish. We didn't see how he waltzed in to a bank and proclaimed to be shooting a bank score scene for a movie only to walk out the front door with all the cash while everyone was looking on, thinking they were going to be in the scene. We never saw any of that. We just saw the fake gun, which may as well have been carved from wood, (which was what the guy next to me thought) and him walking in to banks and holding them up. The screenplay wasn't very strong. As a matter of fact, other than what was in the trailer, it was pretty weak. I think had it been shot the right way, and a had there been a stronger script, and had the story been told in a way truer to Dillinger's cunning, it would have been better. The acting was great...the movie just wasn't. Too slow. Don't tell a story in 2 and 1/2 hours when it can be told in an hour 40 minutes. Flat.