Public Enemies: The "Heat" of the Gangster Era

Rating: 10/10 (7 July 2009)

As I write this, I have read the mixed reviews by both professional critics and even my fellow commentators on IMDb. About how the movie is slow, meandering. Or that it's over-blown, over-long, or too stylistic. It's funny, but I can recall a similar critique of another Michael Mann movie when it premiered....
1995's "Heat" with Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino. Yes, I can clearly recall such mixed reactions. Yet, going on 15 years later, if you ask people to list their top 10 crime dramas, "Heat" is sure to be on the list. And I feel that someday "Public Enemies" will be too.
As someone who avidly reads about the history of the Gangster Era of the 1920's and 30's, I was not disappointed in either the filming, the writing, or the acting in this film. It was "stylish". But that's what made it great. It was about the style and glamor that existed in that era. How it was both stylish and glamorous to be a bank robber at the height of the Great Depression. Men like John Dillinger, "Pretty Boy" Floyd, Alvin Karpis, and "Baby Face" Nelson and others, with their cock-sure attitudes and flamboyance, were turned into heroes by the desperate public and the media despite the fact that they were little more than killers and thieves. What the movie does is analyze the mythology surrounding these outlaws and then showing us the truth about who they were and where their life of crime ultimately led them.
All of this brings us to the three main things that made this movie great: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, and Michael Mann.
Johnny Depp as John Dillinger: Depp's Dillinger is a spot on portrayal of the kind of man Dillinger was. Indeed, he plays Dillinger as a man who knows his time is short so he lives out every moment to the fullest. This attitude is personified by Dillinger's statement "We're having so much fun, we ain't thinking about tomorrow." That was true of the real Dillinger. I loved the way Depp is always watchful of everything that goes on around him with a laid-back "devil may care" attitude and a sarcastic smile. He always seems to be on the look out and gets a private thrill whenever he manages to pull off his latest trick. However, that same attitude that makes him so lovable was also Dillinger's curse: He never contemplated when things would go terribly wrong. Which makes him so human when you see the anger and anguish in how his fool-heartiness causes the walls to crumble around him.
Christian Bale as Melvin Purvis, FBI: I can say it is absolutely refreshing to see Melvin Purvis portrayed as something other than a mythic "super-lawman". In many other previous portrayals of Purvis, he is given the mythic stature of a Wyatt Earp or Eliot Ness, declaring his greatness from the start. Here, Bale's humanizing portrayal of Melvin Purvis is as intricate and welcoming as Johnny Depp's portrayal of John Dillinger.
In this film, Bale portrays Purvis for what he truly was: A clean-cut man, with quiet dignity, humility, and grace who was suddenly thrust into thick of the most famous manhunts in American history. Bale's Purvis is a decent man full of compassion who is forced into situations he does not truly enjoy being in. Take his introductory scene: He is shown hunting down and ultimately killing "Pretty Boy" Floyd. Even though he is doing his sworn duty, Purvis doesn't take pleasure in killing Floyd. In fact, he appears to genuinely regret killing another man. At one point, J. Edgar Hoover is so determined to get John Dillinger and his gang that he orders Purvis to arrest friends and relatives and to push them hard for info on Dillinger. Purvis's immediate reaction is one of shock and moral objection. As when he kills Floyd, you can see it in his eyes: Purvis does not want to do it and he personally does not like it when he has to employ such tactics. This all culminates into an act of heart-felt compassion and chivalry when he puts a stop to a "third degree" interrogation.
Michael Mann, Director: As I said before, the stylistic approach of this film is what makes the tone so great. And when it comes to stylish crime dramas, Michael Mann is the best. He's employed such tactics on "Miami Vice", "Crime Story", "Heat", and "Collateral". And he has again succeeded in creating a vivid template to this film. One of my favorite visual devices he employs here is that hand-held camera like he used in "Collateral" which gives a "reality TV" feel to some scenes as if we're running alongside of Dillinger and Purvis. That camera style helps to add a heightened sense of realism to the moments of violence that explode off of the screen. Meanwhile, the "traditional" movie camera is employed to set the scene and give the film an epic, Norman Rockwell Americana feel. Working in tandem, the cameras achieve the feel I spoke of earlier of how the movie gives us the glossy veneer of the mythology and then peels it away to reveal the hard-core ugliness of gangsters beneath the surface.
I think all three men are worth of at least an Oscar nomination for this film.
In short (I know, it's too late for that!) I'd just like to say that even though the movie may seem long at two and half hours, it is NOT dull. It draws the audience in with great depth of character and then blows us back with sudden explosive violence that was true to the era. If you want the exact facts of the era, go read a book. But if you want to be entertained, go see "Public Enemies". You will not be disappointed.