Formidable addition to the gangster genre

Rating: Null/10 (5 July 2009)

Michael Mann is a fine director known for his male movies from "The Last Of The Mohicans" to "The Kingdom", often featuring real-life male characters as in "The Insider", "Ali" and "The Aviator", and frequently focusing on criminality as in "Heat", "Collateral" and "Miami Vice". "Public Enemies" then - set in crime-ridden 1930s America and telling the tale of flamboyant bank robber and prison escapee John Dillinger - is quintissential Mann. Stylistically - and this movie oozes style - this is trademark Mann, complete with the huge close-ups of intense male faces. What is new is the use by cinematographer Dante Spinotti of high definition video which, together with scrupulous attention to period detail, makes this a true evocation of the period and, together with interesting use of colour and intense sharpness of sound, creates an absorbing movie that one simply has to see at the cinema to enjoy the full richness of the work.
For all the bank robbing and gun fighting, this is essentially a human story and inevitably comparisons will be made with "Heat". Again we have the lawless and the lawman as complex, committed but somewhat taciturn figures circling one another plot-wise and only once actually meeting face to face. The charismatic Johnny Depp plays Dillinger, while Christan Bale is his nemesis FBI agent Melvin Purvis, in accomplished performances backed up by a succession of strong minor appearances. For me, the one female role - Marion Cotillard as Dillinger's moll Billie - does not work as it should and it's hard to understand why he would take such risks for such a tepid character.
Based on Bryan Burrough's non-fiction book "Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34" and with a screenplay partly written by Mann himself, Dillinger is presented in a rather sympathetic light as a kind of latter-day Robin Hood, adding colour and escapism to the dreary lives of Depression-era Americans. It's not always clear what is being said and what is happening, but inevitably one is swept along in a work that, while long (140 minutes), is never boring. It may not have the pacing and drama - and that station shoot-out - of "The Untouchables", but "Public Enemies" is a worthy addition to the gangster genre.