A paycheck movie

Rating: 2/10 (26 May 2012)

This is a paycheck movie for all concerned, a chance to dress up in 30's drag and collect some cash while skipping through some tired, old material. In this case, it's an expensive rehash of the 1973 Warren Oates/John Milius'film Dillinger. (In fact the older, low budget version, with an over-ripe performance by Warren Oates as Dillinger and a young Richard Dreyfuss as a mad/bad/belligerent Baby Face Nelson, is more fun.)Although director Michael Mann bragged at the time about the amount of original research done for the script, it manages to repeat many of the historical inaccuracies of the Milius' film. (The Little Bohemia ambush wasn't the end of the gang; they pulled at least one more job. Also, Baby Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd both out-lived Dillinger.) Finally, the visual look of the film is of poor quality during the night sequences and shootouts. Mann, who in the past has shown a sumptuous eye (watch Thief or Last of the Mohicans) switched to shooting in digital on Collateral and it was a bad move. In night sequences, digital looks grainy and cheap while during the gunfight sequences you can actually see the pixels separate. It's a grubby, artificial look. Despite the amount of talent amassed for the film, it's wasted pretty badly. Skip this one and watch Bonnie and Clyde again.