May be greatest misfire in cinematic history - certainly for a gangster film.

Rating: 2/10 (31 October 2009)

I like Michael Mann, and I like gangster movies; but the trailers on this were not inviting - flashy, slick, without a lot of tension. So I waited 'till the film got to the bargain theater. My pre-viewing apprehension proved to be spot on.
While there are a number of really fine set-pieces here, I haven't seen a film so utterly lacking in focus or theme in a long time. The bare story of the real John Dillinger is strong enough to carry the viewer of the film, but did the audience not know at least something of that story, it would be hard to follow story here, it goes all over the place. And I am shocked that we get to know so few of the characters here - it takes a while to recognize one G-Man from another, even after they have become important to the narrative (such as it is).
It's hard to figure out why Mann decided to go wild with the historical inaccuracy; I'll mention one I found most annoying, first because it is a seemingly small matter, but it also reflects two larger problems. I'm referring to the repeated use of Billie Holiday on the soundtrack - she's even on the radio whenever Dillinger turns it on - unfortunately, she wasn't known during the early Thirties, she was just starting out! It's clear someone wants to make a point by playing her that often - but I haven't got the foggiest idea what it is? Is Dillinger supposed to be a 'black white man' like they say of Bill Clinton? Is his career a foreshadow of Hollidays's? Couldn't they find any other period music to play? Which remarks the soundtrack itself, which is one of the worst in a major motion picture in recent years - it's a mess, evoking a dozen different emotions, almost none having anything to do with the images we're watching at the moment.
The dialog is needlessly pretentious. One thing I feared was having to compare this film to John Milius' "Dillinger" with Warren Oates - but the comparison can't be avoided. Milius, taking his cue from "Bonnie And Clyde," from the earlier Lawrence Tierney film "Dillinger," and from the gaudy gangster films of Roger Corman, fashioned a film that was both flashy yet homespun, part unabashed B-movie, part evocation of American Gothic. Milius' film is by far the better of the two. Even his occasional tinkering with historical accuracy could be forgiven, since it was clear he had a firm grasp on what the Dillinger phenomenon was really all about - 'farm boy makes good by turning bad' is an undeniable folk-theme of American life.
But Mann clearly - and desperately - wants Dillinger to be a real hero, not only of his time but ours. This is the most romanticized version of Dillinger - of any American outlaw - I've ever seen, making the many cinematic apologies for Jesse James seem like harsh condemnations by comparison. But it can't be done. The brilliance of Warren Oates' performance in the Milius film is that Oates plays Dillinger like a runaway farm-boy with a sense of humor and a quick temper, who just happened to rob banks for a living. That's as much as you can give any professional criminal without lying about the nature of crime namely, it's about stealing other peoples' money and hurting many of them in the process. The cowardly punk Dillinger as performed by Lawrence Tierney is probably even closer to the truth. But the sum of all this is not simply that Mann has romanticized Dillinger; that, in a B-movie at least, could have been forgiven. The real problem is that he sentimentalizes the bandit. This turns the whole shenanigans soft like mush, instead of the hard-boiled crime film we should have gotten.
And this leads into one of the worst finales in film history, dragging on and on, and even after we know the story is done - it still goes on, trying to turn itself into a tear-jerker! What a waste!
And what a disappointment from Michael Mann. And don't blame the actors, as some critics have done - they're actually trying to do a good job - but the script is poor, and Mann can't think of any way to direct it properly.