Does not do justice to the story of Dillinger - inferior to the Milius version.

Rating: 5/10 (16 July 2009)

The biggest failing of this movie is how it fails to really convey the desperate situation America was in during the depression. The economic state of the nation was one of the main reasons Dillinger turned to crime and also why he was admired by many as a modern day Jesse James who stole only from the hated banks. Of course this view is romantic and erroneous considering the deaths he was responsible for but to many Americans, he was a hero. Michael Mann fails to show how big a celebrity Dillinger was at the time, to the extent that when he was being held at Crown Point jail after his capture, the female Sheriff Lilian Holley and other officials posed with him for photographs as if he was a film star! Holley is played by the wonderful Lilli Taylor who like everyone except for Depp gets way too little screen time or character development. We are not shown her reaction to Dillinger's escape or what happened later - she was unfairly blamed and fired from her post with many claiming the escape would not have happened if a man was in charge at Crown Point. We also are not shown what happened to Dillinger's accomplice Herbert Youngblood, who in reality died in a shootout with police a few weeks later.
Another part of the real story that Mann does not exploit was the friction between J. Edgar Hoover and Melvin Purvis. Both men used the media extensively to draw attention to their activities, but when Hoover felt Purvis was getting too much attention, he worked to undermine him to the extent that Purvis left the FBI sin 1935. Christian Bale flits in and out of the movie and as mentioned we learn next to nothing about him. The other members of the Dillinger gang are largely anonymous hoods in Public Enemies unlike in the 1973 movie 'Dillinger' where the likes of Harry Dean Stanton, Richard Dreyfuss & Steve Kanaly give excellent performances. The 1973 John Milius version of the Dillinger story, huge liberties are taken with the facts, such as having Pretty Boy Floyd & Youngblood in the Dillinger gang but it aces 'Public Enemies' in every way. Warren Oates was perfect as Dillinger while Ben Johnson's cigar chomping Purvis burns with quiet rage while in pursuit. Milius's take on the story is as lively and energetic as 'Public Enemies' is slow and lifeless.