Strangely underwhelming

Rating: 7/10 (8 July 2009)

Maybe this movie suffers from comparisons with THE HURT LOCKER which I had seen 2 days earlier, but I found this highly anticipated movie static & unmoving.
How could you go wrong with putting down $7.50 seeing Michael Mann direct a period gangster piece with Johnny Depp & Christian Bale going toe to toe? (By unable to stop the constant urge to compare it to a non-stop intense movie about an Army bomb squad in Iraq?) Because this movie like his last one, Miami VICE, never really gets going. It has fine performances: Depp as Dillinger, Cotillard as his dame & Bale as G-Man Melvin Purvis are all very good. However my favorite performance was Billy Crudup who gives "his" J. Edgar Hoover a wicked effeminate flair. (Forgive me --or not-- for not enjoying Hoover played as bit of a poofter.)
Mann is not a grab you by the throat artist (like Paul Greengrass or, evidently, Kathryn Bigelow). His best films (THIEF, THE INSIDER, HEAT, COLLATERAL) seduce you. This one doesn't although it tries very hard.
Like all Mann movies, PUBLIC ENEMIES, is put together with a great deal of care, informed with great intelligence (that even permeated his pulp masterpiece COLLATERAL) & has atmosphere to burn. It just doesn't quite come together as anything more than occasionally involving. Also the digital photography ruined some shots (it worked in COLLATERAL, but it didn't work in ...VICE & it doesn't work here).
Mann has hit grand slams before, but this movie results in a ground rule double.