Mania Grade: B+
Maniac Grade: A+
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- Movie: Public Enemies
- Rating: R
- Running Time: 2 hrs. 23 min.
- Starring: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, Billy Crudup, Stephen Dorff, Channing Tatum, Stephen Graham, and Giovanni Ribisi
- Written By: Ronan Bennett, Michael Mann, Ann Biderman, Mark St. Germain
- Directed By: Michael Mann
- Distributor: Universal Pictures
- Series:
PUBLIC ENEMIES Review
A New Game of Cops and Robbers From Michael Mann By
Rob Vaux
June 30, 2009
Johnny Depp leads the action in Mania's review of Michael Mann's PUBLIC ENEMIES(2009).
© Universal Pictures/Robert Trate
Michael Mann makes one hell of a cure for crappy summer movies. In the midst of all the compromise and the lowered expectations and the "it could have been worse" pyrrhic victories, he delivers outstanding grown-up fun in a manner which doesn't skimp on the action. As deeply set as his films are in crime and the psychology of criminals, it comes as a great surprise that he hasn't tackled the Golden Age of gangsters--the 1920s and 1930s--before now. He often focuses on outsiders arrayed against the system, which means that classic mafiosos like Al Capone and Meyer Lansky won't do. Instead, it's John Dillinger--world-class bank robber and America's last great outlaw--who captures his roving eye in Public Enemies, an effort that ranks among his better ones.
If the film has a failing, it's that it tries to incorporate too much into Dillinger's story, covering not only his tenacious federal foe Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) but also Purvis's boss J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) and the various other criminal figures inhabiting the landscape. Their world is in a state of rapid change, as the burgeoning media grows more powerful and America sinks further into the Great Depression. Criminals of the era find themselves precariously balanced between the benefits of nationwide notoriety and the way Hoover twists such notoriety to his advantage. Celebrity crooks--men with flashy names like Pretty Boy and Baby Face--make a big impression on the public, but they also earn the ire of organized crime syndicates who want to keep quietly making money without drawing attention to themselves. Hoover, for his part, implicitly understands the power of radio and motion pictures, and intends to enhance his own standing with it even as he uses it to put criminals behind bars.
Purvis and Dillinger stand at the vanguard of the conflict, another of Mann's cop-and-crook duos with more individual honor than their respective sides possess as a whole. Dillinger sees the advantage in currying public favor--it lets him hide among a battered citizenry deeply distrustful of authority figures, which in turn helps him pull off his audacious robberies more effectively--but he doesn't understand the nuances like Hoover does. America loves romantic gangsters, true, but it also needs to see them pay for their crimes. Dillinger would know how it's all going to end if only he'd choose to look. Instead, he leaves the worrying to his true-blue girlfriend Billie (Marion Cotillard) who inspires him to risk everything just to keep her safe. Depp augments that equation with his usual intelligence, along with an iconoclasm that echoes ever-so-faintly of Jack Sparrow.
It's an excellent performance, born of movie star glamour but containing enough depth and quirkiness to convey a real historical figure rather than some Hollywood fabrication.
Purvis, for his part, comes from the opposite end of the PR street. He cares about results more than headlines, though he's hampered by his boss's willingness to break the law in order to uphold it and by the way Hoover treats him like a glorified show pony. Dillinger constantly flummoxes his slow, methodical approach to law enforcement, driving the G-Man towards more extreme tactics which threaten his moral authority. Bale has little to do in comparison to Depp, but makes his character work by setting Purvis's desire to please Hoover against his distaste at the means to do so.
Mann orchestrates both the subtle and overt aspects of their story with expected grace. He makes the unusual choice of filming a period piece in high definition video, lending it a unique look without detracting from its authenticity. While his bank robberies here don't quite match the high-water mark of Heat, their adrenaline-fueled tension still takes the breath away as Dillinger leaps across countertops with his tommygun at the ready. Mann may also be the single greatest practitioner of the gunfight in movie history, and when Public Enemies periodically explodes into violence, he skimps on neither the excitement factor nor the shocking brutality of bullets slamming into the human body. His exquisite attention to detail can be seen in every frame (despite a few liberties taken with the facts) and though Public Enemies runs longer than necessary, you really don't feel it until the last twenty minutes or so.
The overall bagginess holds the film back from time to time, not so much a flaw as a series of stylistic choices which smack unduly of auteurial indulgence. Even so, it feels leaner than a number of bloated event pictures currently packing the multiplex, and Mann's technical polish provides enough structure to stave off its shaggy dog tendencies. It even contains a few liberal helpings of humor: always welcome in the director's normally po-faced exercises. The results make for ideal summer sophistication, smart enough to appreciably engage the intellect while fast-paced enough to compete with any piece of empty spectacle out there. Sometimes you can have it all, even if you need to forgive a few incidental foibles along the way. Public Enemies succeeds in having its cake and eating it too, exemplifying Hollywood filmmaking the way it's supposed to be.
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Ummm.. yeah I got nothing. I just wanted to be first wooohoooo!! If there's no "Bale Yell" then I'm not seeing it.