One of the worst films I've seen in a long time

Rating: Null/10 (1 July 2009)

Contrary to the opinion of the previous commentator, this film was an execrable mess. It was completely ahistorical, to begin with. In the year 1934, when three of the biggest strikes ever in the United States were called and the country was in ferment due to the Great Depression, this context didn't receive so much as a mention. Nor was it explained why the ordinary people were cheering John Dillinger as a hero. It was because he worked against the state and returned money that he took from the banks to the ordinary people who were being screwed out of their money, much as we all are today.
Depp, Christian Bale and the other actors should be ashamed of having participated in such a farcical rendering of the Great Depression and of the famous criminals that emerged from the financial devastation of the country.
The FBI and Hoover were rightly portrayed as the enforcers of capitalism and the police state, but this seems only to have been inserted into the film for violence value. There was no genuine analysis by the filmmaker of the true meaning of this American gestapo and the fact that it not only went after bank robbers and gangsters, but also union men, strikers, and ordinary citizens who dared to protest against government policy during the Depression.
What a shallow film. And the lengthy scenes of violence did not advance the story one bit. They seemed to be there to pad out the excessive length of this travesty.
What a piece of crap. I'm glad that I got a free ticket or I'd be even more disgusted. There are no filmmakers today creating anything meaningful about the history of this country or how it relates to the crisis we are living in today. I still await a legitimate treatment of the depredations of capitalism and the relation of what happened in the 1930s to the situation today.