Soulless Disinterest

Rating: 5/10 (19 July 2009)

All the elements are in place for a can't-miss masterpiece, to the point where the generic title ("Public Enemies"? seriously?) seems to be misdirecting us away from the inherent awesomeness that just has to be contained within. The cast? A central trio of bankable faces (Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, and Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard) rounded out by a sprawling cast of notable character actors (Stephen Lang, Giovanni Ribisi, and Stephen Dorff, to name a few). The director? Michael Mann, who has made a name for himself as a meticulous craftsman of cinematic worlds of cops and robbers. Add a period setting pulled from factual events, and the formula for critical praise and box-office success would seem minted. But like a bank robbery gone awry, "Public Enemies" never quite connects: while certain sequences are nothing short of brilliant (two separate jailbreaks come to mind), the characters themselves never transcend one-dimensional types, which, for a film that runs 140 minutes, is simply inexcusable. In his most one-note performance since the 1995 bill-payer "Nick of Time," Depp slaps on a generic Southern accent and a sharp smirk as John Dillinger, whose fearless criminal audacity is ultimately buried under the weight of Mann's frantic technique. Bale suffers the same fate as Melvin Purvis, a committed G-Man who comes across as a gloss on his "3:10 to Yuma" character, albeit with all the character's complexities stripped away. And Cotillard is little more than pretty window-dressing in Mann's typically masculine world. At first, there is some intrigue to the director's technique: obviously using digital video to film a period piece set in 1933, and using claustrophobic close-ups to pinion the viewer within the action, Mann wants us to be accomplices to his anti-heroes. Unfortunately, for as good as Dante Spinotti's cinematography is, Mann's relentless shifting, sweeping, and shaking becomes such a nuisance that it begins to actively erode any entertainment value "Public Enemies" may have; factor in the fluorescent-bulb quality of DV (and its ugly grain in darker scenes), and you have a film of beautiful scenes and images that is a literal pain to watch. But therein lies the paradox: if we feel nothing for these characters, then even the most beautiful imagery would go nowhere toward redeeming "Public Enemies" as a whole.