"What else do you need to know?"

Rating: 6/10 (1 July 2009)

This is one of those rare cases where a director actually gets in the way of his own best intentions. Michael Mann is a smart director, sometimes so smart that one can see other movies pale in comparison to his distinctive voice and style. But he's also gone the way of David Lynch and Robert Rodriguez, shunning celluloid for digital video (you can say HD but you can't fool me, it's *digital* and it's *video*) no matter what the project may entail. His run in the new medium, this time DoP'd by a former Mann collaborator (previously amazing work in The Insider), started promisingly enough with Collateral, then he took a decent detour with Miami Vice, and now we come to this, a period piece shot and edited with an equal amount of professionalism and amateurish-ness that is hard for the mind to boggle with.
Maybe there will be a lot in the audience that won't notice it. And yet for every scene here or there that is brilliantly shot, or a scene where the drama becomes intense and everything gels, there are many scenes that feel rushed, with some compositions way too over-exposed or just looking, well, like a video as opposed to some blockbuster gangster picture. And maybe it's partly my fault for "not getting it", so to speak, that this is the way that movies will go into. But where-as Lynch's use of DV is like out of a surrealist's laboratory, and Rodriguez provides a clear sense of visual effects, Mann's skills as a director of drama and action seem amiss from the looks of Public Enemies. Too often I found myself being pulled out of the narrative, however loose it sometimes was, with digital 'noise' and uneven lighting got in the way (i.e unnecessary sound and bits of information that HD picks up naturally).
But hey, what am I doing going on about all this technical stuff. The question really is this: is Public Enemies worth seeing? Yes and no. No for the technical reasons I mentioned, not to mention some scenes going on for a little too long (it's appropriately epic at 2 1/2 hours) and for some lack of character psychology or development save for Dillinger and possibly Cotillard's Billie. Yes because it is an enveloping bank robber saga more often than not, and it features more than a few pieces of really terrific acting. Some criticism has fallen the film for there not being enough narrative 'focus', but on its quasi-conventional terms in the scope of the gangster movie, there is a compelling story in there, somewhere.
And Johnny Depp - he's so on here that it's hard to see him when he's 'off' really, and he makes this Dillinger a striking force, charismatic and suave, with that glint of danger always there, and a certain devilishness that he makes this real-life "folk-hero" his own (my favorite of this kind of quality Depp brings comes when Dilinger sneaks into the HQ of the Dilinger-Manhunt station and nobody recognizes him). In a way Depp helps to project a similar slick panache the film carries, and between him and a couple of exciting/incredibly bloody shoot-outs, it is at least a curious viewing to see him. Bale, too has his moments, if a little more straightforward in the two-dimensional Melvin Purvis. Big points also go to a great caricature of a 30's figure of J Edgar Hoover by Billy Crudup. And, lastly, Cotillard in her first big Hollywood starring role following her Oscar win is impressive, if only in the last few reels when the intensity builds on her vs. Dillinger vs. the FBI.
So what is Public Enemies? It's not a return to form nor a total embarrassment. It's got the fabric and texture of the 30s, the costumes, the sets, the locations, the cars down very well and the look of the film, crystal clear and muddy in a single scene, contradicts this. It's got a purpose, but its soul is contaminated in an odd way. Mann can be commended for giving a try at taking his digital technology in a "period" piece, but at the end of it all, when the final line it uttered, the results are 50/50 at best.