Ambitious, expensive but crippled with dud characters, dim ideas.

Rating: 5/10 (1 July 2009)

Very disappointing retelling of the 13-month John Dillinger crime spree across the Midwest in 1933-34. Here's why without any BS: 1.) No personality. Gang members remain ciphers throughout. (When Red Hamilton (Jason Clark) dies after being in EVERY OTHER SCENE you think: Who the hell is he. None of the subsidiary people pop, unlike the vast number of vivid unique individuals in HEAT. 2.) Depp miscast badly. Read about Dillinger: he was ebullient, charming, commanding. With NO experience he commandeered the best pro bank robbers in the Midwest to follow his lead and led them on a 13-month blaze of glory and infamy. Depp instead is pensive, moody, brooding, internalized: he never displays the charisma and guile that the historic Dillinger did. He was chosen for his romantic chops, not his gangster chops, because of . . . 3.) Misemphasis on romantic. Mann pays too much attention to Dillinger's least interesting thing, that is, his affair with Billy Freschette. This was clearly NOT a love-unto-death deal like Bonnie and Clyde. Before Billy, Dillinger had girlfriends, after Billy Dillinger had girlfriends and during Billy, Dillinger had girlfriends. The guy had been in stir 9 years; he had a lot of catching up to do. Mann emphasizes this affair, ignores Dillinger's unique connection to his family in Indiana (very interesting), his leadership skills, his courage. Very odd and unfortunate (and disappointing) choice. 4.) Accuracy, as in, lack thereof. Mann really doesn't progress beyond Milius's 1973 truncated take; he starts out with lies (Dillinger at escape from state pen by his cohorts, Purvis singlehandedly bringing down Pretty Boy Floyd) in the first two scenes and it never gets better. In fact most of the men we watch die in the film died AFTER, not before, Dillinger, including Floyd and Babyface Nelson and Homer Van Meter and Harry Pierpont. Why did Mann buy rights to Burroughs' "Public Enemies" if he was going to make stuff up? Also (SPOILER): a major meme in the film is that the syndicate, under Frank Nitti, "got" Dillinger because his kind of spectacular showboat caper was screwing things up for the big money boys; in the literature, I can find NO evidence of this being the case. 5.) Introduced, then abandoned, themes: Mann intros at least four major ideas about Dillinger and his fate which could serve as a kind of structure for the movie; then he abandons all of them, leaving them as pointless curiosities. The first I've mentioned: that the mob got Dillinger. No. 2 (from Burroughs): Hoover used the Road Warrior bandits crime spree as a methodology to grow his Bureau and cement his own control of it and his place in popular culture. No. 3: the coming of western gunman. Indeed, at a certain point, the Bureau did bring in experienced gunfighters as Mann shows, but he never really dramatizes or builds on their contribution to the take-down of the bad guys. He seems to set up, then walk away from the idea of cowboys vs. bank robbers. Very disappointing. 4. The inexperience of Hoover. He includes a scene (it actually took place in 1936, not '33) where a Senator derides Hoover and makes a big deal over the fact that Hoover's never made an arrest. Then of course Mann doesn't bring that issue to conclusion, showing Hoover arresting Alvin Karpis, who is a kind of mystery guest (he's played by Giovonni Ribisi) who appears and disappears from the film without explanation. Which leads to: 6.) Editing woes. Ribisi is just one such mystery guest; other big name, well-known people appear in meaningless, undeveloped characters, suggesting that whole subplots of the film were left out and what we're seeing in a hasty, shortened edit (like the version of "Once Upon a Time in America" that was initially released). You can fairly ask: what the hell are Ribisi, Leelee Sobieski, Matt Craven and Steven Lang even doing here when they have so little to do; Craven doesn't even have any lines! I am looking forward to a director's cut sometime in the future. On the plus side, yes: great clothes, great cars, great location shots, superb editing and beast of all great gunfights. But the guns demonstrate some astonishing marginal attention to detail while much large issues of history are deliberately misstated. Why does Mann get the fact the Babyface had a Colt .38 Super converted to a machine pistol with a Thompson vertical fore-grip mounted on the dustcover (look fast or you'll miss it) at the Little Bohemia shootout but insist, after John Milius, (SPOILER) that the Babyface was slain there. Nelson didn't die until October and he went down hard, taking two FBIers with him. Ultimate judgment: such a squandered opportunity! There's probably never going to be another big Dillinger movie and it sickens me that Mann willfully made so many dubious decisions. These people lived and died and fought and bled for and against us, gave us their lives; they deserved SO MUCH BETTER.