Rat-a-tat-tat.

Rating: 5/10 (25 July 2010)

Michael Mann made a taut and colorful movie about a gang of thieves, "Heat," some years ago but, boy, this is familiar material.
Johnny Depp is John Dillinger, public enemy number one in the early 30s. Everyone knows his face and name. Marion Cotillard is his moll, to whom he returns whenever the story needs a break to allow the wreathes of gun smoke to clear. Christian Bale is Dillinger's chief nemesis, his Jabert, as it were, named Melvin Purvis, who is ordered by J. Edgar Hoover, President-for Life of the FBI, to track down Dillinger and bring him to justice. Assorted miscreants like Alvin Karpis, Frank Nitti, Louis Piquett, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, and Jo-Jo the Dog Faced Boy show up in minor parts.
It should have been called "The John Dillinger Story" and it would have made a good 1930s B feature or a Roger Corman cheapie from the early 60s, which, maybe, it was. It's all about Dillinger and his travails. Depp plays him as a go-getter unconcerned about the past. (What keeps him awake at night? "Coffee.") He wisecracks with the press and becomes something of a public hero, along the lines of Bonny and Clyde.
Christian Bale as the G-Man is efficient, ruthless, humorless, relentless, and a bit of a brute. He beats hell out of prisoners to get information. But, well, come to think of it, he has certain limited gentlemanly qualities. When he finds one of his agents -- a jutting chinned, beefy, pig-eyed guy -- using the petite French actress Marion Cotillard as a punching bag, he puts a stop to it. And we should note that when a captured criminal, a horribly wounded man with a bullet in his brain, is screaming with pain and begging for a shot from the doctor, Bale turns away as one of his men chokes some information out of the bad guy. Purvis is strictly a one-note character.
But, really, don't expect much new here. Purvis gained so much notoriety from his exploits that the media-hogging J. Edgar Hoover demoted him and Purvis resigned from the FBI in 1934. The gun battles are frequent, though sometimes clumsily staged, and you've seen them all in one or another form before. The Tommy guns chatter away with lightning speed but no recoil. You can hold it in one hand and spray bullets as if it were a garden hose or water pistol. And when two bank robbers are sitting around ruminating over a forthcoming job and one of them says, "I got a feeling I'm not going to make it this time" -- do you think he makes it? It's not a terrible movie. It doesn't insult the audience. It doesn't shove a viewer's face into the pain and the gore. It's just that it's all so awfully old.