Borderline Great

Rating: 8/10 (2 July 2009)

It's right on the cusp of greatness; a couple moments lean towards merely good, others topple over into the realm of near perfection. The killing of Dillinger outside the theater and the second jail break, especially the intense "c'mon, turn green!" stop light scene exemplified the latter. The score and choice in soundtrack weren't bad, either.
Michael Mann was certainly ambitious in this project. Sets, costumes, even dialect seemed to be meticulously planned and executed. The scope is vast. The performances are solid. Everything is there for it to be an excellent movie, but what keeps much of the film from greatness is a combination of one dimensional characters, an attempt by the film to be some sort of overly long, somewhat slow masterpiece a la Once Upon a Time in America, and the occasionally drab photography.
What drove Dillinger? Who was he? What made him tick? These questions aren't satisfactorily answered in the film. Depp does a commendable job, but we only ever see his one-note exterior. Purvis is similarly one dimensional, seemingly just there to be the yin to Dillinger's yang. I feel Mann did a better job of fleshing out cop and crook in his magnum opus Heat; the characters here feel just somehow more generic. Props to Crudup, however—he is a great J. Edgar Hoover.
The movie clocks in at 2 hours and 20 minutes. I've got no problem with a longer running time, in fact it's more for your money, but the movie just could have been a little more punchy. Think The Departed. As it is, I just feel the movie drags sometimes.
Mann appears to be one of the biggest directors leading the charge to Digital. I've never had anything against it, in fact I thought it was used to excellent effect in both Collateral and Miami Vice. And while there are some good visuals in Public Enemies, there are other moments of washed out, drab photography. One of the biggest distractions for me was the motion blur, often indicative of HD during pans. Some of the hand-held camera-work seemed out of place, as well. And I've heard others criticize DV's use here simply because it's a period piece, and the two don't seem to belong in the same room together. Whatever it was, Mann might have done well to revert back to film for this one.
I don't mean to go on about the negative. In fact, it's a credit to the movie that it's limited to these three things. I might be biased because it was partially shot in my home state and I was fortunate enough to work on set for a day, but I think when all is said and done it's a genuinely good film. Maybe even great.