HEAT in 1933 style

Rating: 7/10 (16 July 2009)

If anyone watched Michael Mann's "HEAT" starring Al Pacino , Robert DeNiro and Val Kilmer then you know what I am talking about. Seriously the parallels between HEAT also a Mann production and Public Enemies are several....A charismatic , even sympathetic bank robber with a code of conduct and honor , an obsessed law enforcement worker trying to catch him , robber getting closer to flame and his demise after a series of unfortunate events , death of his friends in a stylish gunfight and losing his girl ( played suberply by Marion Cotillard ) because of circumstances he found himself at the end....
Johnny Depp continues to amaze me...His versatility in characters he chose to play is incredible...From a 19th century detective to 17th century pirate to Willy Wonka and now this...John Dilinger....Bank robber a common criminal in Great Depression era but also some kind of Robin Hood or Jesse James like public hero figure....Isn't there any role he can not handle ? Christian Bale unfortunately is overshadowed by Depp's character but this is hardly Bale's fault...Even the best actors can only perform as well as the material given to them...So Bale's character Mevin Purvis seems only a stoic stereotype cop , a one dimensional character. Although writing for Bale's character suffered he did his best and pulled that accent thing fairly well.
Unfortunately film begins with a fairly uninteresting and uneven pacing after initial scenes of a jail breakout. I don't know if that's due to Mann's choice of confusing editing , or mediocre writing of script adaptation. We don not know anything or more precisely see anything about Dilinger's life prior to initial prison break out or his earlier exploits...So the movie begins with an assumption that audience has enough historical information about characters..That is a bad introduction..After a while we see Dilinger's robberies after break out his other escapes from law etc.. And then we get partly familiar with him... After night firefight in farmhouse and to the end of movie things get interesting...We see a fairly dramatic ending to main character John Dilinger with Eroll Flynn's "Manhattan Melodrama" accompanying him..
While Dilinger is shown as sympathetic to audience lawmen of that era are mostly not...J.E. Hoover FBI Director is a bureaucrat , a media relations obsessed public servant who has never been in field. He proposes to use the methods of Fascist Italy to catch Dilinger's gang...Melvin Purvis as I mentioned is very one dimensional except he is a crack shot and he gives in under the pressure of Hoover and "takes out white gloves" as Mussolini said....He turns a blind eye as a wounded suspect is tortured while he was in hospital bed and in pain....He then blackmails someone to set a final trap for Dilinger...Another detective brutalizes Dilinger's girlfriend....Meanwhile Dilinger continues to evade them until the end of movie...Only decent looking law enforcement officer was Special Agent Charles Winstead ( Stephen Lang ) who shot Dilinger at the end and delivered his final worlds to his girlfriend Billie in prison..
1930'ies settings are nice and well produced from clothing to cars and weapons...Firefight in farmhouse at night was cool looking , stylish , with fast moving camera. I think that kind of firefight scene is Mann's trademark.. Summary : A decent movie. Worth seeing..