Genre: Crime Drama
Director: Michael Mann
Starring: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, Billy Crudup
Running Time: 139 minutes (plus trailers)
“We're having too good a time today, we ain't thinking about tomorrow.”
Set against the backdrop of depression era-America, Public Enemies tells the real life story of John Dillinger, famed bank robber and public enemy number one. A roguish, charming anti-hero, Dillinger (played by Johnny Depp) is beloved by the working class, and makes a mockery of the FBI and its lead investigator Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale). With a gorgeous gal (Marion Cotillard) on his arm and a gang of loyal friends by his side, Dillinger is living the high life, but the changing climate of the criminal underworld and the increasingly brutal tactics of the bureau soon bring his world crashing down. Directed in digital by acclaimed film-maker Michael Mann, and featuring some of the hottest talent in Hollywood, Public Enemies never the less manages to be one of the more unremarkable affairs of the 2009 cinema season.Like Mann’s two previous films (Collateral, Miami Vice) Public Enemies is shot on high definition digital cameras, a technique that has proven divisive amongst critics. Personally, I fall well and truly into the “it looks like crap” camp; it’s true that the detail in some of the close ups is spectacular, but any time there is significant movement on screen, the motion blur rips you out of the film. This distracting cinematography proves particularly frustrating in some of the films heist scenes and shootouts – there is an action sequence set in a forest that is so poorly photographed and edited that I was convinced that Dillinger had been riddled with bullets – turns out he wasn’t even in the scene! I applaud Mann for exploring different techniques, but this movie further cements in my mind digital's status as a failed experiment.
The other big problem with Public Enemies (which is highlighted by the documentary style cinematography) is an enormous sense of separation. The entire time I was watching the movie, I felt as though I was being held at an arms length from the characters and events on screen. I had no emotional investment in anything or anyone, and Dillinger especially makes for a surprisingly boring protagonist. Mann clearly wants to build the man up as this mythic anti-hero, but as an audience member I was never offered any real reason as to why I should like him. Depp’s acting is good, but it’s never enough to overcome the banality of his character. Likewise, Bale and Cotillard turn in quality performances, but at the end of the day I didn’t care about the characters they played. Purvis is void of personality, and the romance between Dillinger and Cotillard’s “Billie” is much like the rest of the film: forgettable.Public Enemies is by no means terrible. Parts of the story are interesting, the acting is all good, and the action sequences (barring the aforementioned forest fight) and jail break scenes are quite exciting. The other massive plus is that the sets, costumes and cars are all gorgeous. But never for a second did this movie captivate me, and ultimately I was left wondering why Mann picked Dillinger’s story to be the focus of a movie. It’s an interesting period of history, sure, but the way this story is told doesn’t make it seem that way. The movie is also irritatingly bound by true events – Mann wants to stay accurate, so we get a ton of poorly developed minor characters and a massive anti-climax for an ending. He’d have been better off coming up with a fictional character and giving him an interesting fictional life story. Instead, he told Dillinger’s tale, and wasted his own time, and mine.
Public Enemies is in cinemas now
