Public Enema

Rating: 2/10 (3 July 2009)

This movie was historically inaccurate. In reality, Dillinger's story was much more fantastic and unbelievable. What right does the producer of this film have to change history? One example is the Bohemian Lodge case. Red did not die there. They all escaped. Nelson was killed four months after Dillinger; Pretty Boy Floyd was killed three months after Dillinger. In the film, both were shown to have preceded Dillinger in death.
Depp was smug and subdued; sort of a snotty gangster. This role could have been out of his range. He seemed too skinny and punkish. Stephen Graham, who portrayed Baby Face Nelson, actually looked like him and was able to portray the viciousness of the real person. Christian Bale was solid as Purvis. One thing about the directing: It was awful. The movie consisted of one extreme closeup after another. It happened so frequently that one scene where the camera panned up Christian Bale's face so that you looked up his nostrils prompted laughter from the audience. Marion Cotillard has ugly brown stains on the tips of her upper front teeth. I felt like her dentist staring into her extremely close-up mouth. The scene where they had sex was again filmed so close up that I thought the creases on the soles of her feet were her butt cleavage. What will Mann do in his next film? Use a microscope instead of a camera? And don't get me started on the shaky-jumpy camera technique. The camera panned around and quivered constantly; annoying. The final scene at the Biograph neglected to show Dillinger run into an alley. It also left out the fact that several people were injured by bullets and debris in the carnage. Could have been much better. Depp, like DeCapprio, is a grown man with boyish features. He encountered problems portraying Dillinger much like Leonardo Decapprio had trouble portraying Howard Hughes.