Too much, too little, too late

Rating: 6/10 (29 June 2009)

I was very keen to see this film after all of the PR advance I had read. The film looked great and the music fully completed the film. Sadly, Michael Mann forgot to include very much story in and around the action.
Both Johnny Depp (Dillenger) and Christian Bale (FBI Agent Purvis) work well in their roles. One scene in particular when Purvis visits Dillenger after the latter has just been captured is neatly played. But you get little else from their characters as both of these actors has to find a moment when they aren't brandishing some form of killing machine or in a car chase. There are probably more lines in a Steven Seagal film.
And this is why to me the film is a waste of talent.
We have no back story on Dillinger, other than a throw away line about his mother dying at three and his father beating him from a young age. We start the film with a breakout gone wrong and innocent people being butchered by Dillinger and his crew. And yet, partly down to Depp, in my view, as the film continues you begin to sympathize with Dillnger and his fight against Purvis, who seems to lead a less able rabble than Dillinger at times.
I have made no mention of Marion Cotillard, who plays Dillinger's love interest Billie Frechette. Frechette probably has the most frustrating time of all. Plucked from her acceptable life as a cloakroom attendant she gets 'pulled' by Dillinger, spends most of the film waiting fro him to outrun the FBI and when they finally get together she gets picked up by the Feds and beaten and abused. But through it all Cotillard battles through making the best of an underwritten part.
The pay off of the film is quick well executed with the standard 'slow mo' as Dillinger is gunned down. But by then I would have taken him being run over by a truck if the film could have ended sooner.
This film very much disappointed me. I will probably rent it when it goes on rental just to see what I missed. But I think it's Mr Mann who really did the missing this time around.
6/10