One of Mann's most underappreciated and effective works

Rating: 8/10 (3 March 2019)

Michael Mann vehicles always take a while to grow on you. The first time I saw it I didn't think it was anything too remarkable, just a period gangster flick with a lot of stylistic flourishes. Having re-watched recently as part of an ongoing Michael Mann kick, I can safely say it's one of the most thoughtful and achingly beautiful "Very Serious™" tentpole movies of the past decades. Mann knows how to take a script that in the hands of a lesser director would just be average and elevate it to something indescribable and, for lack of a better word, cosmic. Everything from the acting (including fine turns from Johnny Depp, Marion Cotillard, Christian Bale, and a tragically underutilized Billy Crudup), gritty but beautiful cinematography, gorgeous production and costume design, to Elliot Goldenthal's delicate and varied score give the impression of a period in history playing out before the audience's eyes and ears in a way few films I've seen have accomplished. John Dillinger's mythic crime spree is depicted simultaneously as romantic & tragic and gritty & brutal. Those unaccustomed to Mann's particular mode of low-shutterspeed, gritty handheld digital photography may find the presentation off-putting. But to those who know and appreciate it for what it is, Public Enemies is one of the director's most underappreciated works to date and ought to be reappraised as such.