Awful

Rating: 1/10 (3 July 2009)

This was not what I would have expected from Michael Mann, Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, and Billy Crudup. While I do agree with people that video is an acceptable form of film-making, it did not fit this film at all. Also this was horrible on Mann's part. The whole movie just felt cheesy and these great actors and actresses were unbelievable and not good unbelievable. I wanted to get up and walk out in the middle but I decided to wait it out and I was unimpressed. In addition to all these the story was drawn out and had loose ends. We're expected to believe a relationship between John Dillinger and Billie yet they spend little to no time together and Christian Bale's character also was not given enough time to convince me that he posed a plausible threat to Dillinger. I could not stand it when Billy Crudup had any screen time. I love Crudup as an actor, but in this movie he seem to be just reciting memorized lines and he recited them almost like a robot. I think that the weakest part was the script though. The story was loose and the characters were underdeveloped and the dialog was cheesy. Even great actors like Depp and Cotillard sounded silly. More about the HD. For me, it took away from the look of the film. It looked more like a history channel reenactment or a film student who didn't know what they were doing then a Michael Mann film. It took away from the believability of the story and the poetry of the time. I was so excited for this film, but I was terribly disappointed. I've been telling my friends not to waste their money.