What exactly would a "spoiler" be for this film?

Rating: 7/10 (16 July 2009)

Okay, I clicked the "spoiler" box because I don't want to be blacklisted, but honestly, if you don't know the fate of John Dillinger, you should be reading, not watching movies.
There. That's off my chest.
Now then, in spite of its predictability, Public Enemies has worthy performances from a strong cast. Depp, Cotillard, Crudup, and Steven Lang are standouts, but the cast is big-- new cops and gangsters seem to crop up in ever sequence. The screenplay is well-crafted, and notably fine art direction is sensitively set in the original Midwestern (Wisconsin and Illinois) locations. The only real disappointment is the music. (News flash: Billie Holiday was not the only jazz singer in the 1930s; in fact, she didn't even start recording until a year before Dillinger was killed, so three songs by her is a bit much. Why not Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, Ma Rainey?).
The fact that it's impossible to issue a spoiler for a movie about Dillinger becomes one of the fundamental problems with a gangster movie like this-- unlike, say, The Godfather, which was fictional. It's very difficult to deliver suspense. For the most part, we get action instead-- chase scenes, shoot-outs-- because the question is never, What will happen?, but How will they show it? Michael Mann does succeed in keeping the story moving, and the visuals very engaging, even though the plot is a series of bank robberies, jail escapes, gun battles, and of course a little sex.