I Would Not Care About the Inaccuracies as Much if the Film Didn't Disguise Itself as a Painstakingly Genuine Docudrama.

Rating: 7/10 (16 September 2009)

Public Enemies masquerades in digital camera-work, painstakingly nuanced settings and period details that go so far as to be actual objects held by the characters in real life, the movie disguising as a hyper-realistic docudrama when it is really a complete and utter butchery of history. I would not care about the historical inaccuracies as much if the film were given a more romantic treatment by its cameras, sets and props. It is a novel technique for Michael Mann to bring his recent adoption of digital film-making to the Hollywood biopic, but it gives us every signal that we are watching dramatized history when we are watching nothing but fiction. So there have been many biopics which have taken poetic license, but why do so when the true story is head over heels more intriguing and surprising? When compared to opening the film by featuring Dillinger in prison breaks he did not and could not have been involved in, thus propelling the narrative in a fictitious direction immediately, I don't mind the script having Dillinger and Melvin Purvis meet each other; it is undeniably Mann's echo of the key scene between cop and criminal in his masterpiece Heat, in a strikingly different context. (Rather than blending into the hustle-bustle of L.A., Purvis and Dillinger talk on either side of jail bars in the middle of the sticks, in a time where men on opposite sides of the law knew the starkly defined doctrine of right and wrong too well to permit themselves empathy for each other as the two leads of Heat do in a modern age where the line is much thinner.) But consider the gunfight at the wooded lodge: In reality, over seventy exiting patrons were accosted by mistaken FBI gunfire and Dillinger's gang got away clean. Purvis was not a cool, patient hero but an under-qualified officer tormented by his constant mishaps under pressure. Mann uses it as an excuse for an admittedly spectacular Tommy gun fight between cops and robbers. As a result of his urge to force in great gunplay, every single Dillinger associate who survived him in reality is killed in the movie, all instances being completely different than the way they actually died. Baby Face's real death was a sheer phenomenon that this impatient and simple-minded film revises completely.
Mostly, it is Mann's focus on Dillinger's relationship with Billie Frichette that mutes its impact. Dillinger never had less than two girls at a time, whereas this film not only jacks the tear jerking romantic love-at-first-sight convention up to 100 degrees but also portrays Dillinger's legendary death purely in terms of how sad it is that the lovebirds won't be seeing each other anymore. This, too, affects true account in unnecessary and even implausible ways.
This is not a terrible film. Mann finds great success in bringing Dillinger's middle-class folk hero status to veritable life. Johnny Depp is not playing the clever hood based on other movie gangster performances he has seen. He fits into a kindred link with the man's earthy, down-home clarity. He plays Dillinger as a fact, and we thoroughly believe every behavioral note he hits. It is a perfect performance. That goes for every performance, in their own ways, whether they're hemmed by the script or they require something off-putting like Billy Crudup's transatlantic accent playing J. Edgar Hoover.
Maybe the reason Mann and his co-writers permit him to outlive his associates is because in the minds of the succeeding generations in flyover country, he has. Born and raised in Ohio, I know older people who have but a very few degrees of separation from Dillinger. As opposed to the American coasts, where the country truly is a melting pot and not nearly as much comes as a surprise or a break from the norm, the American Midwest is an incurably normal region of general traditions and populist values, where a dangerous criminal who was involved in the deaths of several police officers, robbed at least two dozen banks and four police stations, escaped from jail twice and was idolized as a modern-day Robin Hood considerably stands out against the backdrop. Thus the deeds of Dillinger and his gang controlled the attention of the American press and its readers during the Depression era, a period which led to the result of the current, more advanced FBI.
As an entertainment, there are so many highlights here, especially Stephen Graham's maniacal portrayal of Baby Face Nelson. Tommy may not have been named after a gun, but here we learn he unequivocally should've been. There's Marion Cotillard's prudent, humble performance as Dillinger's main squeeze, the various creatively captured Tommy gun fights and the idealistic use of Otis Taylor's great song 10,000 Slaves. But whatever rationalizations can be made for the romanticization of the Dillinger story, there simply is no reason why we should be deprived of the remarkable, fascinating and truly presently poignant true account of it, which is incomparably more engrossing.