Johnny Depp is Public Enemy No. 1 John Dillinger in Michael Mann’s Public Enemies

Public Enemies
Directed by Michael Mann
Starring Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard
***1/2

It’s no secret that Michael Mann is fascinated by the criminal element.  Of the 10 feature films he’s directed over the course of his career, half of them deal with bank robbers, drug dealers and other unsavory types that live outside the law.  Even the films that aren’t explicitly crime stories revolve around individuals who operate under their own code of conduct—think of Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans, Lowell Bergman in The Insider and, of course, Muhammad Ali in Ali.  Given that, it’s a surprise that Mann has never made a movie about Chicago in the 1930s, when colorful gangsters with names like Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson were living large and generating headlines through daring robberies that infuriated the flatfoots at the local precincts.

With Public Enemies, the Windy City-born director finally explores his hometown’s history, but the results won’t be what most people are expecting, particularly if what they were expecting was The Untouchables 2.  Had he made this film ten years ago, there’s a good chance that it would have borne a closer resemblance to Brian De Palma’s 1987 picture or, at least, Mann’s own 1995 crime epic Heat, which is generally regarded (though not by myself) as his definitive masterpiece.  But Mann is no longer the same filmmaker that made Heat; instead, he’s spent much of the decade since that picture experimenting with the conventional aesthetics of big-budget studio productions.

In fact, the picture that Public Enemies most closely resembles is Miami Vice, Mann’s controversial 2006 update of the ’80s TV-show that launched his career.  Like that movie, Enemies offers exceptional visuals (courtesy of the latest in HD-camera technology), terrific action set-pieces (which are thankfully free of the CGI-clutter that make the Transformers movies such a headache) and a quiet, but charismatic star turn (Johnny Depp here, Colin Farrell in Vice).  Unfortunately, the film also falls prey to some of Vice’s missteps, including an unconvincing romance, interchangeable supporting characters and a screenplay marred by clunky dialogue and slack storytelling.  Still, for all their flaws, both Miami Vice and Public Enemies are fascinating, technically masterful films that yield more rewards upon second and third viewings when you’ve had time to adjust yourself to Mann’s ambitions versus your own expectations.

In addition to Miami Vice, Public Enemies also shares some similarities with The Last of the Mohicans in the way it depicts the end of an era through the final days of one particular kind of man.  (Perhaps it should have been titled The Last of the Gangsters.)  Unfolding over the course of a single year, from 1933 to 1934, the film follows notorious gangster John Dillinger (Depp) as he pulls of a series of daring robberies and prison breaks, all the while trying to stay one step ahead of Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), the dogged FBI agent who was has been tasked with bringing “Public Enemy No. 1″ to justice by none other than J. Edgar Hoover himself.

Aside from Dillinger’s dalliance with working class coat-check girl Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard) that’s really all there is to the movie in terms of plot.  Another director would undoubtedly have shoehorned in flashbacks to Dillinger’s childhood to explain why he became an outlaw or devoted more scenes to exploring the dynamics of his gang.  But Mann really isn’t interested in any of that; much like Steven Soderbergh—another director who delights in defying convention—he is most intrigued by what his characters represent rather than who they are as people.  In this case, Mann is using Dillinger as a means to explore the fall of the lone outlaw and the rise of organized crime (represented here by a group of bookies who launder Dillinger’s money until they realize that his exploits actually hurt their bottom line) and stone-faced company men like Purvis.

These are all terrific ideas, but they’re difficult to realize dramatically and the script, which was co-written by Mann, Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman and based on a book by Bryan Burrough, occasionally flails about trying to assemble all of Mann’s thematic points into a workable narrative.  Too many of the supporting characters get lost in the shuffle along the way; for example, from the press notes, I know that David Wenham and Stephen Dorff both play members of Dillinger’s gang, but I couldn’t tell you what they did or said.  The various FBI agents that turn up in the course of the movie are equally unmemorable, including Bale himself who is 0-for-2 so far this summer between his lackluster performance in Enemies and Terminator Salvation.  (At least he left his stupid Batman growl at home this time.)  After a slow-burn first half, the movie starts gathering momentum in its second hour as the cat-and-mouse game between Dillinger and Purvis grows more intense and bloody.  The final 45 minutes are absolutely riveting, particularly a nighttime chase through the woods and a climactic scene at Chicago’s Biograph theater.  And even if specific elements of Public Enemies disappoint during an initial viewing, the movie as a whole lingers in your head long after the credits roll.  One gets the feeling that Mann is slowly but surely finding his way to a movie that perfectly marries his command of cinematic form with his somewhat shaky grasp on content.  Public Enemies reveals that he’s not quite there yet, but it’s exciting to watch him take chances too many directors at the studio level avoid.   

Verdict: See It

Every movie villain is plagued by the same problem—no mobility. You’ll see Michael Myers and Jason waltzing ever so slowly after their prey, who always eventually scampers away into survival and another under-written, not-even-remotely scary sequel.

Action movies will eventually employ the same tactics to ensure another money-spinning franchise entry — like Terminator Salvation.

The film, out today, takes place in the year 2018. Robot factory Skynet makes nuclear fuel cells, flying spaceships, and other Blade Runner-ripoff type shit. They even managed to one-up themselves in robot R&D—seductress robots are so 2003 — crafting a titanium killing machine with a beating heart. John Conner’s fucked.

Or so we think.

Don’t wanna give too much away but let’s just say Christian Bale is doing a Terminator 5. Why? Because he outpower-walked the super villain robot plagued by lug-nut-induced lethargy.

I have a simple solution for Skynet—and any Hollywood B-movie writer clinging to the visions of a slasher revival.

That guy. Robotize him. Or just give him a knife or gun—and let him run wild. At least it’ll be interesting.

-Devin Chanda

Terminator Salvation delivers decent action eye candy–too bad the story gets blown away in all the explosions.

Terminator Salvation
**1/2
Directed by McG
Starring Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Common, Moon Bloodgood

Let’s get this out of the way right upfront: McG is not the reason that Terminator Salvation disappoints.  It goes without saying that, as a filmmaker, he’s no James Cameron, the man that got the franchise rolling with the first Terminator film back in 1984 and followed it up with one of the best sequels in film history, 1991′s Terminator 2: Judgment Day.  Despite–or perhaps because of–his titanic ego, Cameron remains one of contemporary cinema’s premiere action directors and both Terminator movies highlight his skill at staging large-scale set-pieces that fuse white-knuckle intensity with a compelling emotional hook.

If nothing else, McG at least gets the first part of this equation right.  The action sequences in Terminator Salvation are big, loud and generally well-executed, offering all the bombast—giant explosions! gunfire! car chases!—audiences expect from a summer blockbuster.  And unlike X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the studio clearly gave McG and his crew a sizeable special-effects budget.  The various Terminator models that make up Skynet’s robot army are convincingly brought to life onscreen via an almost seamless mixture of practical and CGI-effects.  McG also makes some interesting, if entirely derivative, choices behind the camera, choreographing a wild Mad Max meets Transformers car chase and shooting several sequences in long takes that echo Alfonso Cuaron’s modern-day sci-fi classic Children of Men.  That Terminator Salvation turns out to be a solid action flick is all the more amazing when you remember that McG is best known for directing the widely loathed Charlie’s Angels movies, which were deliberately silly and over the top, the very opposite of the grim war picture this one aspires to be.

So, no McG hasn’t ruined the Terminator franchise—the Terminator franchise has ruined the Terminator franchise.  By that I mean that this story is over and has been over since the credits rolled on T2 almost two decades ago.  Cameron’s movies said all there is to say about John Connor (played here by Christian Bale), his mother Sarah Connor (who is only heard hear as a voice on an old audio tape) and the killer robots from the future that are constantly hunting them down.  Thus, the latter-day sequels—the misbegotten Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and now Terminator Salvation—do nothing beyond filling in blanks that don’t need to be filled in.  It’s not an exaggeration to say that if you’ve seen the first two Terminator films, you already know everything that happens in Salvation, which picks up 14 years after Judgment Day in the midst of the war between Skynet and the ragtag Resistance army.  You already know that Connor will successfully find and rescue teenage soldier Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) from Skynet’s clutches, because if he doesn’t, he’ll never send him back in time to impregnate Sarah.  You already know that Connor will go from a mere soldier to the leader of the Resistance because he’s had this destiny drilled into him ever since birth.  Hell, you already know that Connor ultimately defeats Skynet and restores control of the Earth to mankind.  There’s no suspense, no drama to the film because Connor is a narrative dead end—his past, present and future are pre-determined, which makes him a thoroughly dull hero.  It doesn’t help that Bale delivers such a leaden performance, stalking through the movie growling and grimacing like he’s in the middle of history’s worst hangover.

Perhaps realizing they had a scowling blank where a dynamic leading man should be, the screenwriters throw a second protagonist into the mix, Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a convicted murderer on death row who unwisely donated his body to the Cyberdyne Corporation—the company responsible for Skynet’s creation—before his execution.  In the intervening years since his death, he’s been transformed into an experimental hybrid of man and machine: he appears human on the outside, but underneath that layer of skin he’s all metal…save for the human heart that beats within his steel chest.  Released into a post-Judgment Day world, Wright crosses paths with Reese and, inevitably, Connor, who is all too eager to put a bullet in his cyborg brain.  Word on the street is that Marcus was supposed to be Salvation‘s main character, but when Bale turned the role down and made it clear he was only interested in playing Connor, the script was heavily re-worked to shift the focus to John.  That’s a shame because Marcus Wright is the only interesting person onscreen, largely because he’s the one wild card in an otherwise stacked deck.  Unfortunately, the film is unable to explore his personality in depth as it’s forced to regularly cut back to humanity’s humorless savior and his crew of equally stone-faced soldiers, whose ranks include Barnes (the rapper Common, in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it role), Blair (Moon Bloodgood) and John’s pregnant wife (Bryce Dallas Howard), a character of such little importance, her name is never actually mentioned in the movie.

Terminator Salvation‘s actions sequences are strong enough to keep the film from being a complete waste of time.  But it’s a largely empty moviegoing experience because the characters and story don’t demand any emotional investment.  As action-packed as the first two Terminator movies are, Cameron never lost sight of the fact that the core of the story was the relationship between a mother, her son and a surrogate father figure (Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 Terminator).  Deprived of that kind of dramatic heft, Terminator Salvation is little more than a series of big explosions in search of a point.

Verdict: Rent It

The week in casting news.
Movies

Now that her boyfriend Zac Efron was made the transition from High School Musical pin-up to leading man, Vanessa Hudgens is attempting move beyond the franchise that made her a household name.  The actress/singer/amateur underwear model, whose first post-HSM movie Bandslam arrives in theaters in August, just signed on to star in Beastly, a modern-day, New York City-set revamp of the classic Beauty and the Beast fairy tale.  We’re assuming Hudgens is playing the beauty in this scenario, not the beast.

Marlon Wayans is going to find religion as the producer and star of The Year of Living Biblically, an adaptation of the book by New York journalist A.J. Jacobs, who spent a year living his life by the rules laid down in the Good Book.  Since Jacobs is Jewish, does that mean we’ll be seeing Wayans rocking the side-curls and tefillin look?

Despite an almost total lack of interest from the general public, Marvel is still moving ahead with their planned Thor movie.  (Seriously, is there anyone outside of the Comic Con crowd excited about this film?  You’d have more success with a Moon Knight flick.)  Kenneth Branagh is onboard to direct and rumors are flying that the studio is courting Natalie Portman to play the love interest of the yet-to-be-cast Norse God of Thunder.  ‘Cause if there’s any gal a god would go to war over, it would be Queen Amidala.

Meanwhile, Iron Man 2—a Marvel Comics movie audiences actually want to see—announced two more additions to its ensemble, Kate Mara and Clark Gregg.  Gregg will be back as S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Phil Coulson, while Mara’s role isn’t being disclosed.  Might she be an associate of Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow?  Or another Marvel superhero in training?  Let the speculation begin!

One of the biggest mysteries surrounding Terminator Salvation has been whether Arnold Schwarzenegger would take a break from his current day job to make a cameo in the fourth installment of the iconic sci-fi franchise.  Thanks to beauty of CGI, The Governator of California will appear in the movie without having to leave his desk.  Using Schwarzenegger’s original body-mold from the first Terminator, the film’s special effects team was able to create a digital version of his iconic T-800 that will be seen in at least one crucial scene in Salvation.  This way, Schwarzenegger can act opposite Christian Bale without being subjected to one of his profanity-laden tirades.

Speaking of Christian Bale, the famous tempestuous actor has teamed up with Mark Wahlberg and Three Kings director David O. Russell for The Fighter, a biopic about former boxing champion “Irish” Micky Ward.  Beantown native Wahlberg will play the Boston boxer, while Bale has been cast as his half-brother Dicky Eklund, a once-promising boxer turned criminal.

Some franchises just refuse to die—case in point, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who are returning to the big-screen in live action form in 2011.  Never mind that their last live-action venture—which sent them back in time to ancient Japan—never cracked $50 million and their 2007 animated flick didn’t do much better.  Apparently, this new version will be a Batman Begins-style origin story that takes viewers back to the turtles’ roots, before they acquired a taste for ass-kicking and pizza.  I’m just throwing this out there now—how about Megan Fox for April O’Neil and Channing Tatum as Casey Jones?

TV

VH1 keeps it classy with their newest reality show Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew on which the sex-specialist and Celebrity Rehab host helps treat people suffering from sex compulsion problems.  Expect to see familiar faces from Rock of Love Bus and For the Love of Ray J and maybe a few actual celebrities—perhaps even admitted sex addict David Duchovny?

Following up last week’s report about former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich‘s possible appearance on NBC’s I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here, it seems that the disgraced politician has been blocked from doing the show after District Court judge denied his request to alter his bail so that he could jet off to Costa Rica where the show is going to be filmed.  Too bad—but that does mean he’s free to appear on the VH1 show of his choice.

With another season of Keeping Up with the Kardashians looking tenuous, E! is seeking to spin-off the show with a series that would follow Kourtney and Khloe Kardashian to Miami, where they go about trying to set up a business.  Is that business selling more homemade porn tapes starring their far more famous—and attractive—sister Kim?

Johnny Depp and Christian Bale are on opposite sides of the law in Michael Mann’s ’30s gangster flick.

Michael Mann is a born and bred Chicagoan, so it makes sense he’d one day get around to chronicling the Windy City’s gangster days, when crooks with colorful names like Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson roamed the streets, trading gunfire with the coppers and spending their ill-gotten cash on drinks and dames.  This era was previously chronicled in Brian De Palma’s beloved The Untouchables, written by another Chicago native David Mamet and starring Kevin Costner as lawman Eliot Ness and Robert De Niro as crimelord Al Capone.  Set after Capone’s capture, Public Enemies follows FBI agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) as he attempts to capture charismatic bank robber John Dillinger (Johnny Depp).  The rest of the cast includes Marion Cotillard as Dillinger’s girlfriend, Billy Crudup as J. Edgar Hoover and Channing Tatum as Pretty Boy Floyd.  But the match-up we can’t wait to see is Batman vs. Captain Jack Sparrow…

I’m totally riding on Ethan’s coat tails but this is HILARIOUS. How fast is the internet?

Wow… Christian Bale needs to take a vacation or something. This just-leaked tape from the set of Terminator Salvation finds the erstwhile Dark Knight chewing out the film’s director of photography for…I dunno, getting in his light or something.  The best part of this profanity-strewn tirade is when Bale calls out for the film’s director McG to get involved and the guy disavows all knowledge of the situation.  Pretty hilarious stuff.  Listen to the full rant here… just make sure you’ve got your headphones on!

Common fighting side by side with Batman? Awesome, we know! Common and The Dark Knight star Christian Bale will be star together in the forthcoming Terminator: Salvation. Due May 22, check out the trailer below:

2008′s biggest blockbuster explodes onto DVD just in time for the holidays.  Ask yourself again: Why so serious?
The Dark Knight
Warner Bros.
Single Disc: $28.98
Two Disc Special Edition: $34.98
Blu-ray: $35.99
Limited Edition with Batpod: $64.98

Plot: Batman versus The Joker.  ‘Nuff said.

Opinion: With more than $500 in the bank and an almost-certain Oscar nod for Best Picture on the horizon, there’s no question that The Dark Knight is the movie of 2008.   For me though, it’s a very good film that falls short of greatness.  More than anything, The Dark Knight distinguishes itself from other comic-book movies by its sheer scale, redefining what a comic-book movie should look like and the kinds of stories it should tell.  Nolan is painting on a giant canvas here and, to be honest, I think he lost control of the story at a certain point.

The heart of the movie should be the battle between the Joker and Batman over their ultimate prize, the mind of Harvey Dent. Those fanboys who have read such graphic novels as Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke and Tim Sale and Jeph Loeb’s The Long Halloween will recognize some of the elements Nolan has worked into The Dark Knight, from the Joker’s mysterious, ever-changing past to Dent’s internal struggle between his love of the legal process and fierce desire to see justice done, even if it has to happen outside of the courtroom. As long as Nolan keeps this conflict at the center of the film, The Dark Knight is involving, sophisticated stuff.  It’s when he tries to work in additional subplots-the mobsters that are protecting their interests, the amateur Bat-men fighting crime, Rachel and Harvey’s romance, a detour to Hong Kong-that the film’s narrative goes haywire.  Considering where the story heads in the second and third acts, the first half is absurdly overplotted-certain relationships and characters that are established early on all but cease to matter once the Joker starts his reign of terror.  Even with all of these problems, The Dark Knight is a wholly enveloping viewing experience. Nolan’s sweeping camerawork and the stellar production values keep your attention riveted on the screen at all times and the performances across the board are excellent.  And then there’s Ledger; watching his live-wire performance here made me feel his loss all over again. I’m not about to say that he’s the best Joker ever, as each actor that’s played the role-from Cesar Romero to Jack Nicholson to Mark Hamill-has brought something unique to the part. But I do think that Ledger’s Joker is the scariest of the lot, mainly because he lacks any semblance of human emotion. In a summer filled with lackluster movie villains, here’s a bad guy that’s more than just a punching bag. Batman may be the star of The Dark Knight, but Ledger makes The Joker into its pitch-black soul.

Extras: Compared to the geek-friendly bonus features that peppered the recent Iron Man 2-disc set, it has to be said that The Dark Knight is something of a letdown in the extras department.  This means two things: 1) Warner Brothers rushed this disc onto the market in time for the holidays or 2) They’ve got a super-deluxe special edition the works for next year, after the film receives its Best Picture nod.  For now, features vary depending on which version you buy.  The single-disc edition only offers the movie, while the two-disc edition has two behind-the-scenes featurettes, six unedited clips of “Gotham Tonight” broadcasts (the TV news show that appears frequently in the movie) and a gallery of poster art and production stills.  The Blu-ray version offers the most extensive batch of extras, from a pair of History Channel specials to eighteen short making-of featurettes that can be viewed alongside the movie or as a standalone documentary.  Hardcore Knight fans will probably be adding the limited edition Blu-ray gift set to their wish lists, as it comes with a small-scale replica of the Caped Crusader’s sweet Batpod ride.  Considering that The Dark Knight is 2008′s biggest movie, I’m not going to tell you not to buy this DVD, but be prepared to shell out again for an upgraded version sometime in ’09.

Verdict: Buy It

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Lost: The Complete Fourth Season
ABC
$59.99

Plot: Where to start?  Well, this is the season when the castaways (well, some of them anyway) finally get off the island.  But they’re troubles don’t end there-the memories of the people they left behind still follow them and island mastermind Ben is roaming the world with his own agenda.

Opinion: After a wildly uneven third season, Lost found its footing again in Year Four, as the writers took the daring step of flashing forward to the characters’ off-island life, a creative choice that answered a number of long-standing questions while also raising many more.  The risk paid off though-this is the best the series has been since its stellar debut year.  The writing is better, the cast is stronger and there’s a sense that the show is finally building to something instead of killing time.  Best of all, this is the year that Michael Emerson’s twisted mastermind Ben Linus supplanted Matthew Fox’s Jack as Lost‘s real star.  Although it’s a little hard to swallow that Ben has done all the things he’s supposedly responsible for, Emerson sells every improbable plot twist.  Whenever people tell me that they’ve given up on Lost in favor of NBC’s rapidly flatlining Heroes, I’ll just hand them a copy of this set as evidence that they’re wrong.

Extras: A handy eight-minute recap of Lost modeled after that awesome Sopranos YouTube clip; five making of featurettes, covering such topics as the new characters on the freighter and a mockumentary questioning the veracity of the story behind the so-called Oceanic Six; bloopers, deleted scenes and commentaries round out the set.

Verdict: Buy It

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Man on Wire
Magnolia
$26.98

Plot: A documentary about French tightrope walker Philippe Petit, who made headlines in 1974 when he skywalked between the World Trade Center towers on a razor-thin wire.

Opinion: James Marsh lucked onto a great story when he decided to make a movie about Petit’s World Trade Center stunt.  A piece of recent history that many New Yorkers know little about, Man on Wire recounts how this operation came in heist movie fashion, showing us how Petit’s oddball group of accomplices came together in the first place and then put their fearless leader’s crazy plan into action.  Although little footage exists of Petit’s WTC walk, the archival photographs (including the one that graces the DVD’s box cover) tell a thousand words.  I wish that Marsh had pushed his subject a little bit hard for details of his personal life: just how could he afford to devote his life to tightrope walking anyway?  But Man on Wire remains a genuine crowd-pleaser and if your heart doesn’t jump just a little at the sight of those towers being built, you clearly haven’t lived in New York for very long.

Extras: An additional interview with Petit, archival footage of his 1973 Sydney Harbor Bridge stunt and an animated short based on his exploits.

Verdict: Rent It

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Also on DVD

It’s a light week for DVDs, but I do want to highlight two new box sets from HBO, The Wire: The Complete Series (HBO, $249.99) and Deadwood: The Complete Series (HBO, $179.97).  Neither set is as extras-laden as the recent Sopranos box, but at least they offer every episode of these groundbreaking shows in one handy place.  Buy one of these and you’ll have your TV plans set during the early winter months when all the other shows are in repeats.