Entertaining and fun, but short of deep and moving.

Rating: 7/10 (11 October 2016)

If anything can be said about Michael Mann's Public Enemies, is that it is hardly a sensationalized version of John Dillinger's life. Depp plays Dillinger as having a good time robbing banks and breaking people out of prison, but the film itself doesn't portray these acts of crime and violence as fun, daring, or morally acceptable. Depp's character never stops to celebrate his victories or dance in glory. Unlike The Godfather or Goodfellas, where the audience is rooting for the criminals the entire time, Public Enemies does not take the same stance. Instead the movie portrays the tragedy of a man who has no other vice then to rob banks and the consequences of those actions.
Christian Bale plays, Merlvin Purvis, a newly appointed FBI agent assigned to hunt down American's number one public enemy, John Dillinger. Again, the film does not try to glorify the hay days of the 1930 and the fun and excitement one might get from day to day gun battles in the street. Purvis is a torched character, who seems to long for something besides massacring criminals on the street, in a sense he feels genuinely afraid of Dillinger – or afraid of failing to arrest him.
Like Mann's film Heat, this has a dramatic narrative and laced in between are hard hitting, and terrifying at times, gun battles. Where in other films, characters might be dodging bullet left and right, here Mann creates greats tension in the feeling that anyone of us might get shot. Many of the angles from the gun battles are looking down the barrel of a Tommy gun – like a third person shooter game. Mann does tend to keep the camera a little to close to the action and drama on screen. It would have great to see a few more wide angles. However, the aesthetic of the film is how close and shoulder lever the camera always is in respect to the characters, creating of feeling of being a part of the action or another character in that location.
This film is certainly a great film, with rich characters that probably are best brought to life through Depp and Bale. The only fault to this film, is that narrative it holds it's character entirely at arms length. Unlike Heat or The Insider, where we are drawn into the characters and their psyche, this film never lets us in. If it were not for Depp and Bale, we might even be a few more steps back then we all ready are. The perspective for the audience isn't as an audience member but as an observer who might be there watching them now. Public Enemies does have great acting and a lot of violence. It is entertaining and fun to watch, however Mann who usually puts out A+ material, falls a little short here. But still, Public Enemies is better than many of them films out there today.