140 Minutes Of Tedium

Rating: 2/10 (29 May 2012)

Public Enemies is a pretentious piece of rot that has just stolen 140 minutes of my life.
Prolix and tedious, "Public Enemies" unspools at an excruciatingly slow pace and is best recommended as a cure for insomnia. The script is at times unintentionally laughable, clichéd, trite, historically inaccurate and ultimately boring.
The lighting is so poor that at times the film appears to have been filmed in a closet, the dialog is often unintelligible and the musical score at times is intrusive.
Michael Mann's ham-handed directing and producing worked much better on the small screen in Miami Vice and Crime Story.
Christian Bale is noteworthy solely for the utter ineptitude he brings to his performance as Melvin Purvis. I've never been a fan of his but here in "Public Enemies" he is particularly dreadful.
The saving grace of the film (and the only reason I gave it two stars instead of the one it so richly deserves) is Johnny Depp's nuanced performance as John Dillinger. Depp's performance rises far above the material.