Public Enemies

Rating: 7/10 (15 August 2013)

Chronicling the criminal escapades of John Dillinger, famous bank robber, in his later career Public Enemies plays cop (or in this case FBI agent) and robber on a grand scale in the 1930s American Midwest. Johnny Depp is brilliant as Dillinger, always cool and confident to the point of cockiness he makes the role really come alive. Set against him is Christian Bale as Melvin Purvis, an agent of a FBI still in its early days. He is also great and a good counterpart to Depp as he relentlessly tracks him. The acting and filming is good and makes the story come alive but do not mistake Public Enemies for a documentary or even an extremely historically accurate film. There are numerous factual discrepancies which is fine as long as it still tells an interesting story. That brings up one of the other problems in that Public Enemies falls halfway between history and story while neither completely recreating events as they were or coming up with something completely original. Some characters are not as fleshed out as they could be and a lot of knowledge on a particular figure is sometimes expected to explain their behavior. While those things can be a bit of a problem at times that doesn't stop Public Enemies from being an enjoyable film which while not on the level of some older gangster films like The Untouchables is still good.