Beautifully Composed, but Lacks Narrative Drive

Rating: 6/10 (13 July 2009)

The scenes in "Public Enemies" are beautifully composed. You know you're watching a film by a veteran director with a film school education. The Depression period of brand-name outlaws like John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd, and the nascent FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, is a fascinating one, and it is recreated here with great attention to fedoras, overcoats, and vintage cars. The soundtrack is lovely and works very well with the images on screen. The film lacks narrative drive, though. It never brings its characters to three dimensional life. As much as I enjoyed all the serious fedora-wearing going on, I was tempted to walk out. There was no narrative drive or tension, and no characters I deeply cared about, gluing me to the screen.
Johnny Depp is handsome as ever and exudes movie star charisma, but he is a bad choice for Dillinger. He's ten years too old. Dillinger and many of the other Depression-era outlaws were notorious for their youth, their life on the edges of mainstream society, and their desperation. Depp never looks like a desperate, edgy, young, outsider. He looks like a suave CEO. Christian Bale is as focused and fascinating as ever. In a very brief role, Marion Cotillard is most sympathetic as Dillinger's moll, Billie Frechette. I would really like to see a movie, based on a more powerful script, that featured this same cast.
The film falls into the trap of glamorizing Dillinger, turning him into a tender, devoted, poetic lover. Um  mebbe not. Dillinger had been a thug all his life, beating up other kids in school, quitting good jobs, committing petty crimes, and never learning his lesson. There were reasons why frightened Depression-era Americans, feeling betrayed by banks, glamorized outlaws like Dillinger. I suspect that the loved ones of those men Dillinger and others like him killed would feel differently. The film could have taken up that tough question – why we humans put murderers, from Dillinger to Stalin – on pedestals – but it never does.