Definitely below par

Rating: 1/10 (11 August 2009)

This movie just got released in my town and I was eager to see the movie which portrays the criminal acts of the famous 'John Dillinger'. Instead I felt like watching another documentary from Discovery. AND YES it felt like watching TV because the print shown in the cinema was indeed 35mm. The intention of using 35mm although was justified as the content came from an era when 35mm was gaining popularity but definitely did not justify using it to capture some of the histories most notorious criminal acts. This particular parameter resulted in very poor camera handling, which at times was below par when compared to an amateur. Also, the editor definitely proved that he simply does not like to edit any movie made in 35mm and he has made this fact very clear for the entire length of the movie. And the length of the movie made no difference in enriching the content given such methods of delivery.
This movie disappointed me on the script front as well. Being a big fan of bank robbing genre, this movie did very little to make anyone believe that robbing a bank would be as simple as shown here. The characters had very little to talk, I could even see the frustration on the faces of the actors who wanted to speak something but just simply could not because it is not in the script. The violent nature of John Dillinger was very poorly depicted in the movie. John was more often shown as the smart one and not the violent one, which I believe is opposite in real life. If you want to show a documentary, let the audience know about it from the beginning and not let them wondering/guessing what they have been watching for over two hours. Many a times throughout the movie, it seemed to have been made in a hurry, from which I infer that this movie was never suppose to have been made but was finally made just for the sake of making a movie on John Dillinger.
In my opinion, this movie had strong characters but the script simply did not capture them well enough to be worthy of a good review and hence such a review.