Why did they do so little with so much?

Rating: 4/10 (11 August 2009)

Public Enemies is an unfortunate case of a director focusing all his attention on the star to the detriment of the story. And this is doubly disappointing since the story is a true one that captivated America and defined an era. How could anyone take such fertile material and make it so dull? The film is a plodding, cliché-ridden exercise that goes out of its way to avoid character development, leaving us watching a bunch of cardboard cutouts that we neither know nor care about at any point during the film. Dillinger, Purvis and an older agent brought in from Texas are the only interesting characters, but they aren't allowed to do anywhere near enough between gunfights. None of the careful planning that went into the Dillinger Gang's bank robberies is ever shown; it's portrayed as if they just got out of a car, walked in the door and started shooting. No bank robbers who worked that way would ever survive to attain legendary status, let alone steal enough money for anyone to notice.
Worst of all, the fascinating relationship between Purvis and Hoover gets little attention, which is absurd. The closing credits mention that Purvis "left" the bureau a few years after getting Dillinger. In actual fact, Hoover's paranoia drove him to force Purvis out of the bureau for fear of being usurped by his own poster boy. Michael Mann could have improved this film tremendously by cutting an hour out of the middle and then depicting Purvis' rapid fall from grace after his triumph over Dillinger. It would have added some real drama and an ironic twist at the end: The outlaw Dillinger is loyal to his confederates unto death, while the lawman Hoover betrays his own best man. How could any director pass that up? Like everything else in this film, we can only wonder what he was thinking.