Off to a Slow Start.

Rating: Null/10 (12 July 2009)

Personally I thought the first third of Public Enemies was rather disjointed. Had I known nothing about the background to the story, I might have been struggling. I sat in my seat with a slight sense of disappointment, but not quite able to put my finger on exactly what wasn't working for me. Then, about one third of the way into the movie, maybe slightly less, it picked itself up, and I started to enjoy it. Maybe it was the appearance of Marion Cotillard as Johnny Depp's love interest that livened things up and made everyone suddenly multi dimensional? Or perhaps it's just that we expect so much of star Johnny Depp, and so much of director Michael Mann, that anything less than utter perfection is bound to disappoint? Public Enemies is certainly one of the better movies I've seen so far in 2009, and I watch a lot of movies. But it didn't really live up to the high expectations I'd set for it. Good? Yes. Great? No.
Let's be honest here, any movie featuring my two favourite actors on screen at the same time – Depp and David Wenham – would have to be pretty dire to truly disappoint me, and I simply cannot see Depp getting involved in anything dire, can you? But this isn't Bonnie and Clyde, although it may well have had ambitions in that direction. It will not be seen as a classic of the gangster movie genre.
Depp, as always, is charismatic, as Public Enemy No. 1 bank robber John Dillinger in the Mid West of the depression era. This guy was no Robin Hood, and the movie doesn't gloss over the slaughter and mayhem his gang caused. When the movie opens, the gang is being busted bloodily out of jail. They set off on a string of bank and train robberies across the Mid West, upsetting not just the authorities but also the Mafia, for whom Dillinger is a renegade, a free agent and a nuisance beyond their control. Crime has moved on, they tell him at one point, beyond the freelance small time gangs such as his, into massive organized crime such as wire fraud. Against this backdrop, J. Edgar Hoover (a very good Billy Crudup) is trying to set up the FBI, a force able to pursue outlaws across state lines. Christian Bale plays Melvin Purvis the G Man tasked with tracking Dillinger down, but it's a rather one dimensional performance. Eventually Dillinger is betrayed by a supposed friend, a woman who will be deported if she doesn't finger him.
The performances are all pretty good. I especially liked Cotillard as Dillinger's girl, Billie Frechette, and Diane Krall puts in a brief appearance as a night club singer. The sound track is good and the cinematography just fine, the time period is lovingly recreated. But somehow, for me, it never really rose above the sum of its parts to become the truly exciting film it should have been with a director and a cast this good. It lacks that extra magic that distinguishes a good film from a great one. As I said above, good but not great.