Henry Saw: Public Enemies

Well my most highly anticipated film of the summer is here...I really liked it...but it isn't perfect



Sometimes you know how you're gonna feel about a movie before you even see it. This is different than being excited for a film (or dreading one for that matter). I'm talking about when you look at all aspects of a movie going in and you're just certain how it's going to play for you. For instance: I knew I was going to hate Year One. I hate Jack Black, I dislike Michael Cera, all the trailers made it look painful...I just knew that it wasn't going to somehow win me over. Well Public Enemies is the opposite - I knew I was going to like this movie even if it had problems.

For starters, I find dramatized looks at the 1920's and 1930's Prohibition / Great Depression driven crime waves fascinating. Despite all having flaws I think Bonnie and Clyde (a definite classic), The Untouchables (a stylish but empty film), and Road To Perdition (an under-rated gem that isn't any fun) to all be really interesting and eminently watchable movies. The old Warner Brothers gangster films of the 1930's, like the original Scarface or Angels with Dirty Faces, are entertaining and provocative reflections of the era in they were made and hold up surprising well. Even a film like Dick Tracy, a movie I can't stand by the way, or the old Loony Toons that featured comical gangsters, are fun to watch to see how pop culture has digested and represented the principle heroes and villains of this tumultuous decade.

Second, I'm a pretty big believer in Michael Mann. I do think the man has made some clunkers (coughMIAMIVICEcough) and that the film that seems to widely be considered his best, Heat, is more than a little overrated. But you look at The Insider (brilliant film), Last of the Mohicans (one of my favorite films of all time) or Collateral and it's obvious that the man knows how to put together an exciting and intelligent film. Public Enemies seemed perfect for Mann as it combined the period film immersion and scope of Mohicans, the shootouts found in Heat and Miami Vice (by far the best parts of those films), and the interesting character conflict of Collateral all put into a really intriguing environment.

I was also certain I'd like this movie when I saw the who the cast would be. While the movie didn't have any of my favorite actors I thought it was very well cast. Johnny Depp playing a cool and efficient bank robber who got the public on his side. Marion Cotillard had the right face for a movie set in 1930's Chicago. Bale, the most "intense" actor in Hollywood, was a good fit for the straigt-laced G-Man on Dillinger's tail.

So, when I walked into the theater on Friday night, I was pretty sure I was going to walk out having really liked the movie. And that's exactly how I felt about Public Enemies: I liked it...I didn't love it...and that's a little disappointing. The films opening scenes of Dillinger leading a prison break and then robbing a bank were well done but these early scenes exemplified some issues I would have with the rest of the movie.

The leading complaint I've heard about Public Enemies is the camera work - this doesn't look like any gangster movie you've seen before. Mann uses hand-held Digital cameras for the entirety of the film. It is the same style he made Miami Vice and Collateral with, so while it isn't surprising, it is jarring to see a film set in the 1930's that has that look. Using this camera style in a period film, is not quite as effective as those two modern thrillers and at times it feels more like home movie recreations than a major Hollywood production. I've heard others complain the camera work reminded them of The Blair Witch Project, I disagree (it's never full on shaky cam), but I can see what they're saying. The Camera is often a split second behind what's happening - a gun will fire off screen and then the camera will turn towards it - which was supposed to immerse you in the action of the film but that doesn't quite come through.

The other thing that could be noticed about these early scenes is that Mann really isn't concerned with making the movie fun. Now let me say right now that I thought the movie was very fun to watch, but that's me, and as I said I really like things associated with that era. Mann plays the film very seriously. While Depp makes Dillinger an interesting and charismatic character the script is not very concerned with portraying Dillinger as the public saw him: A flamboyant robin hood figure. There's some of that, they accurately show how Dillinger would leap over the bank teller's desk like Zorro, but you wouldn't be able to say that the film's tone is anything but quite hard and meditative.

Still, the opening worked for me and I liked how it threw us right into the main part of our narrative. It didn't give us a long intro to each character - it trusted us to get who these guys were - and just started with a bank heist scene with no buildup. It was great to see this as the planning behind these bank jobs was not that interesting but the efficiency and professionalism showed while pulling them off is.

Also in the opening moments we are introduced to Christian Bale's Melvin Purvis, the FBI agent who would get credit for taking down Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and others, in what is probably Bale's best scene. Set to Otis Taylor's "Ten Million Slaves", we see Bale pursuing and killing Channing Tatum's Pretty Boy Floyd in an exciting introduction where Bale's monotonely glum and flat performance actually has some cold purpose. I can mention here that the repeated use of Otis Taylor's, and later Bille Holliday's, music is very effective throughout the film.

The movie plays out as you know it will, Dillinger's cat and mouse game with the FBI is the heart of the movie, with Dillinger's relationship to his girlfriend Billie (Cotillard) and J. Edgar Hoover's (Billy Crudup) effort to assert the newly formed FBI's authority as subplots. In general the overall narative of the film isn't the film's strength but simply setting out to recreate the final year of Dillinger's life was enough for me.

The acting in the film ranges from merely okay to great. Bale, looking kind of bored throughout, does not impress as Melvin Purvis. While it's true that the role didn't offer enough substance to his role, Bale still could have mined it for more, and Bale completes a much weaker 2009 summer than his blockbuster 2008. Cotillard is just kind of there, she has the look but not the magnetism for the role, but she does get a nice scene when the FBI "interrogates" her. The other supporting roles, Crudup as Hoover, Stephen Graham as Baby Face Nelson, Stephen Dorff as Dillinger's partner Homer Van Meter are all well chosen and help sell the setting of the action.

The standout is Depp who nails the role of Dillinger. Thoughtful, naive, playful, professional, a little psychotic, loving, a bit of a cad...it's all there. This is Depp's best performance in quite awhile, and his best non-cartoony (i.e. not Jack Sparrow) performance since Donnie Brasco. No matter what the flaws of the movie were I was always engrossed when Depp was on screen.

Mann's direction, outside of the strange camerawork decision, is solid as always. His gunfights are exciting, the confrontational scenes are well paced, and his handling of the last night of Dillinger's life is masterfully done. The film isn't as luscious as Sam Mendes' Road to Perdition but Mann clearly enjoyed making a film set in a 1930's version of his hometown of Chicago and the film's aesthetic nicely blends the active life of Chicago and the empty landscapes of rural Illinois.

The film is long, and a little scattered, and I am not crazy about how they fudge some of the sequencing of historical events (they have Baby Face Nelson dying before Dillinger which isn't how it happened in real life) but that's what happens with historical dramas. So I was slightly let down by Public Enemies, I had hoped it would be a Best Picture contender and it just isn't, but it is a very solid entry into the gangster cannon. The flaws, though undeniable, simply did not bother me that much when measured against how good Mann and Depp are at what they do, and how compelling a subject Dillinger makes for a film. So I was right, I knew I would like this movie and I did, but unfortunately I did not love it.

Grade: B+

Best Scene: It's a tie - The opening scene showing Purvis gunning down Floyd and then Depp's final scenes as Dillinger goes to see a gangster movie on the last night of his life.