An emotionless film, with good action scenes and acting!

Rating: 6/10 (31 December 2016)

"Public Enemies" is a biopic about the robbing-life of John Dillinger told from his perspective and from that of the police.
Michael Mann, the director of among others "Last of the Mohicans", was also the director of this movie. In the previous named film he did a good job, in this one however, I found that it didn't live up to my expectations. He made some bold choices, whereby the movie suffered. He sometimes made it look like they were filming a documentary, which may sound logical, because it's based on a true story, but it really wasn't integrated nicely into the film and didn't fit well with what the movie had set up as a theme. He also let the camera shake a lot, which also didn't always work. Sometimes it did, like in the beginning sequence, which I by the way very much enjoyed. In that beginning sequence he used good soundtrack and changed the camera viewpoint often, whereby he has created an interesting and tense scene. Unfortunately the rest of the film wasn't as good as that first scene. Mann also used close- ups very often in this film, which gave a claustrophobic feel to the movie. That didn't fit with the movie as well. But he interchanged them at times with long shots, and due to this you weren't always caught in a claustrophobic feel. He also overused shadow and that sometimes created a nice shot, but other times it didn't work out that well. But overall this wasn't really annoying and it worked most of the times. It helped to create a dark atmosphere, and I believe that that was what Mann was trying to reach.
The cinematography wasn't the greatest too: it was not a good looking movie. Which is by the way surprising, because the cinematographer had previously worked with Mann in other movies, that did look good. Michael Mann did however capture the action scenes very good. Those were tense and exciting to watch. Those scenes were actually the one that saved the movie, unfortunately. The soundtrack, though, I found to be pretty good, just like the costume design. This really helped to create the atmosphere the movie was going for. The sets too looked realistic and helped with the previous named thing. The sound design was good as well. The gunshots and all sounded realistic to me. The editing of movies is always done in a special way with Michael Mann, and in this film that was again the case. Sometimes I was a fan of it sometimes I wasn't, because at times scenes were edited in a clever way, like with placing the head of the character in one corner and switching between two characters at different places having a telephone conversation, but their head is always at the same paces, if that was any clear. So it was a hit or miss with the editing. But I found the pacing to be good. Hence this is a two hour plus film, I was expecting dull, boring parts, but there were none, due to the good pacing.
The acting was very good. I had my doubts with Johnny Depp, because there are only two ways he performs: absolutely fantastic, or absolutely horrible. An example of an absolutely horrible performance of him can be found in the terrible, atrocious film called "Mortdecai". What a bad film. But in this movie I had a bit of hope it would lean to the fantastic side – "Edward Scissorhands" for example - , because Michael Mann was behind the camera, and it did in fact lean to the fantastic side. I very much liked his performance. Christian Bale, who played the detective trying to capture John Dillinger, too had a good acting achievement. His accent was consistent and sounded good to me. Marion Cotillard played the new girlfriend of John Dillinger. She gave a very good performance. I thought that she was the best out of the cast.
The writing was lesser good. The story was interesting and told in a good way, but it was emotionless. The characters didn't get any development, whereby you didn't care what happened to them or what would happen to them: it just felt flat. The only really emotion we see from John Dillinger is when he says what happened in his youth in a quick fashion to Marion Cotillard. And that's about it, which is kind of sad actually, because we see Jason Clarke's character in a lot of scenes with Johnny's, but yet I can't even recall his name. So when he died it just felt like another disposable cast-member died, even though this wasn't what they were going for. The dialogue, however, was well written and realistic. Some of the lines were very good, but I think that they focused a bit too much on that aspect of the script, and less on the charactorial part of it.
In the end this wasn't Michael Mann's best films, but it wasn't his worst either. The acting was good and so was the beginning sequence. The script was lacking in character development, but it succeeded at the dialogues. Nonetheless, even though the characters weren't good, Michael Mann managed to create good action sequences that held up the movie together with the acting. That's why this film gets a 6.2/10 from me.