"Bonnie and Clyde" this is not!

Rating: 2/10 (8 July 2009)

"Public Enemies" is a real waste of time. Some of the audience left early in the showing I attended, and I could sympathize with them entirely. Story? Were you expecting a story? Bank robber robs banks, gets girl, is hunted by the police. Not much of interest there. Somehow Prettyboy Floyd, Babyface Nelson and Frank Nitti get thrown into the "story," casually and for no particular reason. Why they left out Machinegun Kelly, Ma Barker and Bonnie and Clyde is a mystery, and with Frank Nitti in the mix they might as well have given us some Elliot Ness, too. Overblown, Hollywood-style fight scenes? Oh, yeah, everyone and his dog was carrying a sub-machine gun (hmm, in real life I thought it was all Tommy guns with those round cartridge cases during the 30s, but what do I know?), and these were not run-of-the-mill guns, they had ammo and firepower and Dolby noise enough to take out a tank. Bwammo! bwammo! The overkill was next to laughable. A movie with heart - a brutal cop who tried to beat a confession out of the killer's moll is on the point of plugging Dillinger in the back but pales and quivers and looks like he wants to cry when the bad guy turns, looks him in the face, and gives him (shudder) a look. Now that's high drama. Finally, something has to be said about the annoying camera work, shaking and jumping, pointing this way, then that, framing half-faces - and the editing with constant quick-cuts so that for long sections nothing is on the screen for more than 3 seconds. It's one of the worse movies I've seen in a long time.