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

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…