Two and a half cheers - at least it's got Depp in it

Rating: 5/10 (2 January 2010)

Oh dear, I have just read three reviews by professional critics who have probably forgotten more about film-making than I shall ever know - including the by now not only venerated by venerable Roger Ebert - and I disagree with them. So what does that say about my judgment. Not a lot really, I am bound to admit. Ebert especially admires Michael Mann's art, his attention to detail, his obsessions with getting the little things right, and it has to be said that Public Enemies doesn't show you Hollywood's notion of the Depression, it seems to show you the Depression. So why do I find myself only able to give the film two cheers, despite the attendance of Johnny Depp, who can act the pants of most of the competition? All I can say is that I found it rather an old-fashioned film despite the hand-held camera-work and the special effects. To me, though obviously not to Ebert and the others, it never really settled anywhere, yet seemed at times, especially the 'death scene' to be shot through with a somewhat spurious significance. Potentially interesting aspects of Dillinger's life were touched up but never examined. In a way it reminded me of Scorsese's Aviator about Howard Hughes: both amble along from beginning to end, but - well, why exactly were they made (apart, of course, to get the punters paying top dollar and keeping the moneymen happy?) In Public Enemies we have an obviously corruptible FBI evolving into the force it became under an obviously corruptible Hoover, we have the Mob casting Dillinger adrift because he is 'bad for business', we have his status as a 'folk hero' and a latter-day Robin Hood, yet these are more or less touched upon in passing. None is investigated, though doing so might have given the film rather more depth. I got rather confused by the gang members and who they were, but perhaps that is just my fault. Then there is the man himself: depicted as something of a fatalist, it would be interesting to know what drove Dillinger. And if we can't have the truth, well why not make something up - it's done all the time and is known as art. The central love affair between the man and his moll is also, to put it bluntly, rather uninteresting and I, for one, was not in the slightest moved by Billie Frechette's anguish. I should add that I was rather underwhelmed by Heat and the emphasis on having the two stars acting together (a follow-up intended to cash in on having De Niro and Al Pacino act together again was, I understand, something of a damp squib). So there you have it: you can take the pros' word for it and regard this as a great film. Or you can listen to what I say and take such claims with a pinch of salt. But go and see it anyway, if only for yet another great Depp performance.