Michael Mann takes on Dillinger

Rating: 7/10 (5 September 2009)

The gangster movies are by now one of the most well-established film genres. Born in the American reality of the 20s and 30s, as time passes they slowly become a genre that expands internationally and also reflects much about the times the films are made besides and they do so while retelling stories that have already become history and bringing to screen characters that have become legend.
So is Michael Mann's 'Public Enemies'. One interesting aspect this film raises is the relation between popular culture - especially cinema - and the real lives of the 30s gangsters. Before becoming heroes on screen these bad guys were inspired in their deeds by heroes on screen. A scene in 'Public Enemies' close to the final shows Dillinger (acted by Johnny Depp) taking inspiration from a screen criminal acted by Clark Gable. Earlier we see the mobsters meeting in cinema theaters, watching newsreels and cartoons, and also playing with the press a public relation game that was much part of their ego and also of their fight for survival.
'Public Enemies' goes far in researching the epoch, using original settings, fitting the wardrobe, weapons or music to the time it describes. From this point of view the achievement is remarkable, and it's one of the reasons the film almost never loses the grip on its viewers, despite the two hours and twenty minutes of screening which seems to have become almost standard in Hollywood lately. Well documented is also the story of the formation of the institutions that are fighting crime nation-wide as well as the relations between the bank robbers and the emerging organized crime institutions of the time. What is missing from the film is the psychological justification of the behavior of the characters. Dillinger and his friends, super-cops Hoover and Purvis (acted by Christian Bale) are just what they are - gangsters and cops, bad guys and good guys, and director Mann seems to tell us to take them as a given. A couple of lines tell something about Dillinger's unhappy childhood, mother died young, abusing father, and that's it - an average guy with great talent for organization falls on the bad side of law and life. His romantic interest with Billie Frechette (French actress Marion Cotillard, deserving a much better role) is also average, and gets a tragic nuance only in the context of Dillinger never being able to fulfill his promise to protect her - from what? from himself actually. We learn even less, actually nothing about what made tick cop Purvis in risking his life to become a chief mob fighter.
Johnny Depp and Christian Bale are two formidable actors and they give both memorable performances here. Depp looks bad dangerous and dangerous any moment on screen, he is also charismatic and unfulfilled. His bravura seems to hide uncertainty, his thrive of living today is determined by the knowing that there will not be many tomorrows for him. Bale is entering his character as he always seems to do in the movie she acts in, up to the feeling that he lives the lives of his heroes. The rest of the cast is OK, but the lead performances being that strong it looks like all the other are gravitating around the two.
In a period of crisis, with many contemporaries of ours questioning the systems that govern our lives characters like Dillinger exercise fascination. They were public enemies, enemies of the system of their time, fighting it their way. Yet, they were evil, robbing banks is not the solution for anything, same as the nowadays corrupt financial schemes are not a solution for anything. Showing the real life of such characters that became popular heroes of some kind may help in understanding this message.