Chicago never looked better, but Michael Mann has made better films nonetheless

Rating: 6/10 (26 April 2010)

Stanley Kubrick apparently once said that a film isn't a photograph of reality, but photograph of a photograph of a reality. In Michael Mann's Public Enemies, Johnny Depp is playing real life bank robber John Dillinger sitting in a movie theater watching Clark Gable play a gangster in a gangster movie. That's an actor portraying a gangster in a movie that a gangster played by another actor is watching in another movie. That's a photograph of a photograph of reality, an especially common phenomena in gangster movies. I don't think any gangster movie can avoid it's own mythology.
And then, Public Enemies is still a gangster movie that attempts to be as naturalistic as possible. Based on a book by Bryan Burrough it's a visual spectacle of authenticity. The details are there without Mann making a fuss of it. It ain't the South of Gone With the Wind, it's simply the 30's as good as it gets in any film. In this surrounding the actors can only do it as straight as possible. Together with all of the other characters, Depp's Dillinger is peeled down until he's just a human being, walking and talking and robbing banks. We are not watching a myth come to life, nor are we spending time on the psychology couch with him. When he courts the woman of his choice (that's the kind of man this is) she attempts to make him go away by pointing out that she doesn't even know him. He says, almost annoyed, just to get it out of the way: "I was raised on a farm in Moooresville, Indiana. My mama ran out on us when I was three, my daddy beat the hell out of me cause he didn't know no better way to raise me. I like baseball, movies, good clothes, fast cars, whiskey, and you... what else you need to know?"
So, John Dillinger was excellent at robbing banks and even better at jailbreaks and that's about it. If a man like him would ever need to be a movie hero he would have to be played by Johnny Depp. He's ideal and immediately makes him inexplicably likable. This is the best quality of the film, and it's also it's weakest point. He's not likable in any romantic sense, but he's not somebody you get angry with either. It's a Rise and fall-story of an American gangster, but there's no emotions involved. The great counter-example is Christian Bale playing Melvin Purvis, the Special Agent assigned by J. Edgar Hoover to track him down. He is paradoxically cold and thorough and, great as Bale is, we understand his character even less. In fact, these two characters seem disjointed from each other as if they are both inexplicably doing something pointless for no reason. It's especially a bit of a letdown when Michael Mann have been such an expert in the past dealing with the psychological problems of destructive masculinity. The biggest comparison that comes to mind is of course Heat, the gorgeous and intelligent cops and robbers-film where Robert De Niro and Al Pacino were to meet up face to face. At times, Public Enemies inevitably feels like an unofficial prequel or remake and it does fall short by comparison. There was psychological strength and emotional heaviness there that Public Enemies deliberately avoids. What it does instead is filling the screen up with great tech stuff. Any fan of film making should see this film just to witness professionalism working in sheer, eclectic delight. Well disciplined dialog scenes are intercut with hand-held DV and delicious editing make any viewer watch these characters move along with delightful ease. Right down to casting choices, the film is in many ways impeccable - Anna Sage, the woman who eventually betrayed Dillinger, is played by the wonderful Branka Katic who was unforgettable in Emir Kusturica's wonderful 1998 comedy Black Cat, White Cat. Someone certainly had to convince someone with that choice.
Public Enemies is a little tricky. It's not a bad film, but it's not entirely worthwhile either. It's a good looking film - and well dressed, with Depp and Bale in 30s suits - about a gangster who's neither Tony Montana nor a real person. We've seen it before, but on the other hand it has been done a lot worse in lesser films. At the same time: It's a good film, but Heat is better.