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Public Enemies (2009)

Director: Michael Mann

Time Out rating

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24 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

Two of the finest actors of their time. The hunter and the hunted. A Michael Mann crime classic. But enough about ‘Heat’, what of Mann’s latest offering? This chronicle of 1930s bank robber John Dillinger and the efforts of J Edgar Hoover’s federal agents to take him out is headlined by a steelier-than-usual Johnny Depp, who convinces as the wily and ruthless thief. Mann’s film is an ambitious fresco of Depression-era America, where a string of armed robberies is grabbing the headlines and prompting a highly publicised crime-fighting operation directed more towards elimination than justice – significantly, new federal powers designed to assist the investigation also threaten the mob’s lucrative cross-country gambling activities.

It’s a fascinating moment in history, and Mann captures the cars, the guns and the buildings with painstaking, immersive authenticity. Then he has cameraman Dante Spinotti shoot it in widescreen digital video (with white-out windows it looks deliberately ‘digital’ too), so creating a ’30s crime flick with an in-the-moment immediacy quite unlike other period reconstructions. We’re right there on the running board as the getaway cars screech down the streets…

Impressive though it is, the film would be more thrilling if we had any genuine emotional connection to the characters. We end up knowing more about the social and political context for the crime spree than we do about the motivations of the key players: Depp’s Dillinger is driven by some generalised desire to escape, his moll Marion Cotillard merely sketched in, Christian Bale’s square-jawed lawman Melvin Purvis implacable in carrying out his duties. Elliot Goldenthal’s orchestral score strikes up to suggest some tragedy unfolding, but we’re just not swept up in it – and the Bush-era resonance in the human-rights questions posed by the feds’ brutal tactics isn’t sufficient compensation.

As in Mann’s ‘Miami Vice’, there’s a worrying feeling that the movie’s just skating over our feelings without really gathering much traction. It’s an event movie, of course, yet as Mann continues to lock himself into handheld DV mode, it does seem as if much of the poise and nuance has gone out of his filmmaking.

Author: Trevor Johnston

Time Out London Issue 2028, July 2 - 8, 2009

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User reviews of this film

Lyn Miller said...

Posted on Jul 18 2010 17:25 As someone who grew up in Indiana not far from Dillinger's home, he was someone I have always heard and read about. As a journalist, I did stories with the man who put together the collection of Dillinger items that Depp and Mann studied while making the movie. I loved the movie and I think it was far more truthful than many critics have indicated. Dillinger was a poor Hoosier who learned social skills from the movies. I think Depp's portrayal was much like many desparate mid-western young men of the time. Life was brutal and it created brutal individuals. Life was moment to moment, without plan or thought beyond the next few hours. I think with Billie, Dillinger wondered for a moment if something else was possible. As he sat in the movie on the night he died, I suspect he realized it was not.

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VerbSap said...

Posted on Mar 26 2010 11:46 ‘Violence is as American as blueberry pie’, and this film is yet another illustration of that saying. Factually, the film is nearly 100% accurate. Emotionally, it completely misrepresents Dillinger in the interests of pandering to that combination of sentimentality and admiration of brute force that makes up the dark underside of the American psyche.
Dillinger, a bully as a child and a sociopath as an adult, is portrayed as – well, really quite a nice guy. The director represents this serial whoremaster as touchingly devoted partner to his rather sweet girlfriend ‘Billie’. The fact that, as the film correctly states, Dillinger was finally gunned down after an evening out with a couple of prostitutes, might seem to some of us to be at odds with that image. But director Mann, for whom ‘irony’ is evidently what you do to remove creases from a shirt, takes this all in his stride, leaving us with the only factual inaccuracy of the film: Dillinger’s ‘last words’ (never actually uttered) for Billie, delivered by one of the G-men in a cloyingly sickly final scene.
In a further unconscious irony, the man who orchestrated the manhunt for Dillinger, Melvin Purvis, is portrayed here as the real psychopath. He is humourlessly stated to have died by his own hand in 1960, and we are presumably meant to believe that his inner demons finally destroyed him, and that Dillinger’s romantically free spirited attitude to life is best after all. The facts that Purvis was treated abominably by the jealous Hoover after his success with Dillinger, and that his shooting was probably an accident with a faulty firearm, are ignored in the interests of this shoddy piece of posthumous public relations.
The take home lesson? Watch the film, and understand how it is that the US can continue to admire and support the gang of sociopaths currently running the state of Israel.

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Mark Sp said...

Posted on Aug 02 2009 15:59 An incredibly dull self-involved film with the emotional intensity of watching dry paint dry, It was painfully slow with a cast of characters, none of whom could i give a damn about. The dialogue was stilted and mainly risible, If the director had any sense of pace, he would cut the length by at least 45 minutes and bothered to develop a narrative which kept the audience remotely interested. I would recommend that everyone with a pulse give this film a miss.

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luke said...

Posted on Jul 21 2009 21:02 dissappointing

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ARCHGATE said...

Posted on Jul 16 2009 10:28 This is a great film. However, it is not aimed at ya run of the mill cinema goer. It requires a bit of research and thought whilst watching it. This is based on a real gangster who commited outrageous jail breakouts and bank robberies. I only wish this film was a longer. I hope there is more footage on the DVD.

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Rob C said...

Posted on Jul 16 2009 09:01 I was looking forward to the movie and went to see it before reading this review. I have to say that the review is spot on although perhaps a touch too positive. The film is very dull and it is impossible to become emotionally attached to any character. It is overly long, and could easily have been cut by half an hour by just reducing the number of scenes with guys just pointlessly shooting at one another without any success at all for hours on end. As with most Mann films, it looked great but was so far up its own backside, the characters and story got completely lost.

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anita said...

Posted on Jul 12 2009 15:06 I thought this film was very uninspiring and uncreative ... the script was very slow (which is not necessarily a bad thing in itself) and dull (which is inexcusable). I did not feel any affinity with the characters - although I think Depp tried his best with the poor script and direction. The shootout scenes actually became comical - with fresh plaster and timber exposing an obvious set build. The scene between Dillinger and his girlfriend on, what I presume was a beach looked like it was on the moon ! Very odd indeed!
I suspect this film was made because it was a good prospect financially and with such a fine cast why shouldn't it be ?... but , as with many films that are being made currently, it did not translate well onto the screen because of a lack of real leadership from producer, director and writer.

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Cappybear said...

Posted on Jul 12 2009 09:57 I thought this film was pretty good; Johnny Depp oozes charm, Marion Cotillard looks stunning and the sets seemed authentic. As for the charge that the characters lacked depth, I think we saw enough to know that Dillinger lived for the present and made the most of it, whereas Agent Purvis probably lived with his mother and drank nothing stronger than milk. The film is a tad overlong; otherwise, well worth seeing. My wife enjoyed it, too.

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Rusty said...

Posted on Jul 10 2009 15:44 It's like 'Bugsy Malone', but with slightly older kids.

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Ginster said...

Posted on Jul 10 2009 15:37 Nothing but a period catwalk show filmed on a mobile phone.

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Val Demise said...

Posted on Jul 10 2009 13:52 I won't deny that I was a little disappointed with the movie. the script was made up with alot of small talk, and the relationship between John Dillinger and whatever the girl was called was very unbelievable, by which I mean it's not likely the girl would fall for a man who immediatly says he's a very famous and possobly dangerous theif.

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critique said...

Posted on Jul 10 2009 11:00 This bears many similarities with Mann`s classic `Heat` but isn`t in the same league as that benchmark. . There is precious little depth to any of the characters, with Purvis and Baby Face Nelson, in particular, criminally under-developed. The action sequences are outstanding, as impressive as anything you will ever see in a cinema, but this could have been so much more with an improved script and richer characterisation.

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Justin Berkovi said...

Posted on Jul 07 2009 09:57 Being a huge Mann fan I was very worried about this one. Since Mann has used DV to shoot his films they've lacked something and I truly now believe that he should revert to FILM as opposed to this medium.
Public Enemies is a fantastic flim. I usually cannot stand Depp but he turns in a great performance of someone not too dissimilar to Neil MacCauly in 'Heat' - a lost soul living and dying for his recklessness and passion for the heist, the buzz and the adrenalin. He brings a sense of romantic playboy that wasn't present in Heat with DeNiro's very serious portrayal of Neil.
I actually found Bale to be very good in this film contrary to many reviews. He seems to be (and ultimately was) a troubled man, not sure of his outward confidence but ultimately trying to do his best.
The set pieces were absolutely brilliant and the gun battles rivetting (typical Mann). I loved the tone of the film and the colours but unfortunately if there was one flaw then it is a major one where Mann is concerned. Why shoot this on DV? Surely a film of this era would have lent itself beautifully to film? Eastwood's stunningly shot ' Changeling' comes to mind - similar era, similar tone but Mann's use of DV allows many frames to render too quickly on screen making you cringe 'video' and some scenes are just washed out and you can almost 'see' the pixels.
I'm nit picking here because I thorougly enjoyed Public Enemies but others in the cinema did not. I suspect this isn't the film itself but just the odd way it looked.
A shame then for a big budget picture to almost look like it's been shot on camcorder in parts but a lovely film nonetheless and one of Mann's better recent efforts.
I hope he returns to film though because right now DV just doesn't cut it.

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ARCHGATE said...

Posted on Jul 06 2009 07:13 Do not miss this film. When Dillinger goes into the police station and walks straight into the "Dillinger TaskForce Offices", it demonstrates how audacious this man was. This was the best scene in the film. Christian Bale's intense performance is a perfect counterpoint to Depp's charismatic star turn. The sequences deaths is not meant to be an historical documentation of the truth. This is a film made to entertain.

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Bo_Nidle said...

Posted on Jul 06 2009 00:25 I have been a fan of Michael Mann since I saw his first film, "Thief", way back in 1981. I have to admit his later efforts such as "Collateral" and "Miami Vice" have left me wanting a return to the days of "Heat" when he reached the height of his powers. So is "Public Enemies" a return to these heights? I would have to say Not Quite.
This is not to say that PE is not a good film, it is. It is just lacking the sense of grandeur and style of his earlier works.
The portrayal of Dillinger by Depp is very good. The sense of his recklessness and pure "adrenaline junky" attitude comes across well. He revels in his reputation, living a life of anti-stardom almost akin to the screen gangsters of the films of the era he so obviously enjoys.
Bale on the other hand is so bland as to almost disappear. This lad needs to seriously lighten up a little, as his screen performances are becoming so dull as to be lifeless.
The films action set pieces are very well done but then one does expect this of a director with Manns reputation. His legendary attention to detail all to evident from the clothes worn to the weapons used. This has become a Mann trademark.
However the story takes some major liberties with history. "Pretty Boy Floyd" did die at the hands of a unit lead by Purvis but this was several months after Dillinger. Homer van Meter (Dorff) died in an alleyway in St Paul Minnesota after a brief gunfight with Police, also after Dillinger. Lester "Baby face nelson" Gillis also died some months after Dillinger in a shootout with FBI agents. To show them dieing in the FBI shootout at the Little Bohemia Lodge was really playing fast and loose with the facts. In fact the only people apprehended there by Purvis and his men were the gangs girlfriends. It was a monumental failure for Purvis whis resulted in the deaths of three innocent men in the car that was leaving and was fired upon. A moment shown in the film but never made quite clear as to what had happened.
So how should PE be judged? As a totally accurate biopic of Dillinger it fails on some counts but scores well on others such as the portrayal of the escape from the Crown Point jail in Indiana using a wooden "gun" and the media circus surrounding him at the time.
But his foray into the Dillinger Unit office at the Police Hq is pure fiction and I thought a scene that could easily have been left out of the film.
Did I enjoy it? ( because it reads like I didn't doesn't it).
Yes I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was filmed on digital and this has been much maligned by critics and although I thought it gave the film a "you are there" look to it I would prefer the classic look that his look that his cinematographer Dante Spinotti showed in such mann films as "Manhunter" and "The Last of the Mohicans". As said the action pieces are excellent, the pacing is good and the characters come across well. It does show the naive ineptitude of the fledgling FBI very accurately (Yes they really were that bad!).
So all in all a bit of a mixture with the result coming out as being very good.
If you know anything about Dillinger you may be left a little disappointed. If you go to it wanting a rattling good crime epic showing how insane the the early '30s crime wave was, then you'll enjoy it.
So take the Mrs and she can lust after Depp while you enjoy the firefights.

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