Michael Mann trailblazing a pore-filled, naturally lit run and gun, documentary approach to period biopic filmmaking.

Rating: 7/10 (18 February 2020)

Mann, ever ahead of his time and not risk averse throws two fingers up at a proper sound mix, and revels in digitals ability to move from outside and inside of environments giving the film a truly homemade feel. Fly on the wall was not a way you could describe a film set in 1933 before, something the film enjoys putting ahead of the first scene to remind you you're not seeing something in the present day. Mann shoots the history that is stranger than fiction with a Fincher-like attention to detail that had me googling for hours afterwards to find more of the details behind the supposed truths.
A yell when you spot them star studded cast sit alongside the stars in cautious, subdued thankless roles. The boiled down script and Mann's proclivity to let the fire burn deep inside his characters means that critics were easy to be cruel to them, when in reality it's refreshing to allow Mann's close camera to let us peer into these souls instead of have everything splashed around in grand OTT fashion. It makes you engage as psychologist not passive when watching them.
There are flaws, it loses steam by the end, an intentionally terrible sound mix is still terrible and Cotillard and Depp's chemistry is pared back to the point of nonexistence and therefore chunks of the movie depending upon it fail entirely.
But Mann has made something magical as always, something edgy and experimental and well worth existing which is more than most filmmakers do. Here he is actually making art of a kind. And in time it will be appreciated. His editing swallows all the best filmy bits of the film the way The Wire swallows its most TV storylines in between episodes. Where else would ceilings actually be an integral part of deciphering the themes of the film. And in many ways Public Enemies is a bookend to the superb Assassination of Jesse James regarding celebrity outlaws in the history of the USA, whereas Jesse James had only archive newspaper and pulp serials to base its myth and legend on, Public Enemies had the early days of reporting and witness testimony To hinge a sort of tangible historical reconstruction on. Here there are some scathing parallels between the birth of G-Men and the height of post-9/11 law enforcement techniques and torture. In many ways the film is secretly a bait and switch to show how sadistic and villainous Hoover's police were and how their celebrity and their lawlessness made them a far more formidable threat than Dillinger perhaps ever was.
There are many other reasons why I love this movie, dripping with period detail and then set at with a run and gun approach to make you forget all of that. The rest of the things I love about this movie, I can't put into words. In my book, that makes it one to remember and one to promote.