"Occasionally riveting story of John Dillinger's crime wave with a credible romance thrown in."
PUBLIC ENEMIES
Universal Pictures
Reviewed for MovieWeb by Harvey Karten
Grade: B+
Directed by: Michael Mann
Written By: Ronan Bennett, Michael Mann, Ann Biderman, from Bryan Burrough's book "Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34."
Cast: Johnny Depp, Stephen Graham, Giovanni Ribisi, Billy Crudup
Screened at: AMC 84th St., NYC, 6/25/09
Opens: July 1, 2009
Everybody knows that when Willie Sutton was asked "Why do you rob banks?" he replied, "Because that's where the money is." Sutton was less interested in money than in the high he received while robbing. He was a gentleman, never using a loaded gun, never carrying out a robbery if a baby or a woman customer screamed. Whether John Dillinger, like Sutton a Depression-era gangster, was a gentleman, would depend on whether you're talking to his girlfriend or some bank presidents. As played by Johnny Depp in Michael Mann's often riveting picture, Dillinger notes that he is "too busy having fun to think of tomorrow," a good part of the fun consisting on winning the affection of a woman he truly loves, Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard). Considering that we never really see Dillinger using the money he extracted from several banks, we must conclude that his career of robbing banks plus the thrill of escaping from secure jails gave him the high he needed month after month.
However Depp is not having the kind of made-for-kids fun he enjoyed in "Pirates of the Caribbean." Looking considerably different from the way his fans have known him, his Dillinger is not the folksy kind as described in John Milius's 1973 movie which starred Warren Oats but instead plays a cool, confident cucumber of a man-one who brazenly visits and casually leaves the FBI office which sports a painted door sign "Dillinger Division," a trip he might have taken to admire his pictures hanging on the bulletin boards. Though considered by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup, playing the chief in a probably accurate foppish manner) to be Public Enemy #1, he has no problem hanging out in Chicago, the center of Depression-era gangsterism.
Mann's film starts with a bang with the escape from the Indiana State Penitentiary by Dillinger and some followers in 1933. He takes an immediate liking to a nightclub coat-checker, Billie Frechette, who does not take long to allow herself to be swept off her feet. Hoover appoints Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) to head the Chicago office of the Bureau, defining the chase: it's Purvis vs. Dillinger, and almost needless to say the villain, as is true in most movies, has the charisma while the pursuers are arrow-straight.
Prison breaks alternate with bank robberies, the loud rat-tat-tats of the Thompson submachine guns light up the darkness like Fourth of July exhibitions. First Pretty-Boy Floyd is gunned down by the law, then Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham). Bank robberies are dramatic, in two cases the bank presidents are grabbed by their necks and forced to open the vaults. Not dramatized, however, is history's testimonial that crowds cheered Dillinger as a Robin Hood, partly because of their hostility to banks (sound contemporary?) which had foreclosed on their homes, partly because Dillinger destroyed records of loans and mortgages held by the institutions.
The chemistry between Dillinger and Frechette is palpable, in large part because the woman's role is handled by the excellent Marion Cotillard, who won an Oscar for her lead performance in La mome, in the role of Edith Piaf.
Filming in Wisconsin and Illinois, Dante Spinotti seems to have avoided signs of Depression. No soup kitchens here, only people enjoying themselves in night clubs, movies, all wearing fashionable suits and dresses. Some of the dialogue is unintelligible, and the project could have been better if Spinotti used real film instead of HD. Exciting as the film is, it somehow lacks the electrifying resonance of Arthur Penn's 1967 film "Bonnie and Clyde," given Faye Dunaway's startling performance as Bonnie Parker. The work appears mostly accurate historically: even the marquis of the theater that found Dillinger enjoying his last movie is authentically recreated.
The epilogue notes that the real Melvin Purvis died "at his own hand," though many believe he shot himself accidentally while trying to dislodge a tracer bullet from his gun. All in all, Mann's production does not break new ground though expensive production values make this one of the finest action movies in a season of adventure pics that has not yet come up with celluloid much better than "The Taking of Pelham 123."
Rated R. 140 minutes. © 2009 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
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