Letdown, but still good entertainment

Rating: 6/10 (20 July 2009)

Okay, this isn't the all time greatest flick ever made but a less then perfect Michael Mann movie, is still better than average.
I don't know, but after seeing the big, loud and noisy shootout in Heat, seeing it being repeated time after time here gets a little dull. There is basically nothing wrong with the performances by Johnny Depp, Christan Bale and especially Billy Crudup as Hoover, but I wish that Mann would have delved a little deeper into what made Dillinger the admired and feared figure that he was.
We see him escaping from prison but we are essentially left in the dark about how he was able to outsmart the law time and time again. There is a scene reminiscent of the one in Heat, where Bale's and Depp's characters come face to face but afterward there is no resolution. Bale's character is oddly uninvolved with the capture of Dillinger at the Biograph.
Instead we are presented with the long time tradition in cops vs. robbers films of bad guys on both sides. There is an especially nasty sequence with the law interrogating a witness. On the criminals' side we get Baby Face Nelson, who is made out to be such a caricature that he doesn't tickle the funny bone at all, you merely wonder why Dillinger didn't plug him after the first heist. The movie doesn't explain why they were associates.
Depp is absolutely one of the greatest assets to have in a movie, but if the character he is given is so nondescript, you can't be anything but disappointed. Depp is not needed here. If Bale and Depp had switched roles it wouldn't have made any difference.