Regardless of aesthetic, period or, to a studio’s dismay, budget, Michael Mann now shoots films on a high-end version of a digital video camera you’d use at a barbecue.
He’s done it with Collateral, Miami Vice, and, now, Public Enemies – a biopic of 1930s bank robber John Dillinger where it’s used to peculiarly, but invigoratingly, anachronistic effect.
Dante Spinotti’s cinematography is all vivid daytime contrast, nubby nighttime scenes and pristine detail. (Savor knotty gunstock pine, scratchy stubble, quivering down on a neck’s nape, steaming gun barrels and last breaths escaping in chilly air.)
It’s a thin line between digital love and hate – Mann’s critics argue he’s traded cohesive themes and airtight stories for faddish form. Yes, Mann has settled into tony, fat-budget versions of his early mas-macho milieu. Yes, he’s unlikely to boldly venture outside that subject as with The Last of the Mohicans, Ali or The Insider.
Still, no modern director is as attuned as Mann to crime’s contradictions, punishment’s perils and roiling emotions involved with it all. In his world, no successful justice is wholly righteous and no illegal crime truly unsavory. Public Enemies is imperfect, but it’s perfectly engaging, entertaining and invigorating.
Johnny Depp Stars as 1930s Bank Robber John Dillinger in Public Enemies
In the hardscrabble thick of the Great Depression, Dillinger robbed banks the way some might seek an MBA – with diligence and dedication.
Drawing out the dragging death of a mentor – as Mann does in an opening prison break– seems gratuitous. But in those agonizing seconds, Dillinger sees desperation he seeks to, but can’t, avoid. Scores grew riskier and scarcer, charming country boys gave way to cunning Cosa Nostra, and, in time, Dillinger’s pistol-packing Robin Hood persona had played out with the public.
Depp finds much to be afraid, and fond, of in a man purposefully pursuing a legacy and myth for himself, and vulnerably confronts the dark side of Dillinger’s fantasy. Dillinger could rob a bank in 100 seconds flat, but the 24-frames-per-second of the big screen is faster.
Together, Mann and Depp nail the lucid-dream quality of Dillinger’s last night. But Depp doesn’t always feel like a sparking live wire Dillinger had to be and occasionally lacks his requisite zip.
Christian Bale Co-Stars as Dullard Lawman Melvin Purvis in Public Enemies
However, Depp feels eternally dangerous compared to Christian Bale – as bland here as in Terminator: Salvation that he’s beyond second banana. He’s second kiwi.
Bale is Melvin Purvis, a backwoods Fed tabbed to take down Dillinger by J. Edgar Hoover (played by Billy Crudup with a maddening accent akin to a British Squiggy).
Purvis’ life – and death – could make for fascinating material, but the movie plays that plot down to Bale’s flatliner levels. Nor does it find much pulse in the idea that both Dillinger and Purvis are smarter-than-average hillbillies – twinned opposites. Instead, Purvis becomes a cipher for the Feds’ “progressive” methods to round up Dillinger’s gang.
Oscar-Winner Marion Cotillard Snaps Movie to Life in Banter with Depp
Depp has a finer foil in Oscar winner Marion Cotillard as Dillinger’s paramour, Billie Frechette. In a meeting that’s sexually and sociologically charged, a luminous Cotillard matches Depp gleam for gleam, and when he holds out a red coat for her, it’s like a toreador bracing for a charging bull.
Billie’s trust in Dillinger is no less tenuous than that of his most recent jailbreak partners. In a later scene others would overact with trembling bravado, Cotillard easily persuades the audience that she’s a woman who knows the risks of this ride.
Michael Mann Offers Usual Supporting-Cast Gems, Furious Action in Enemies
True to his form, Mann punctuates Public Enemies with stunning action scenes of choreographed chaos and brief, but memorable, turns by tertiary players.
A safe-house shootout depicts the treacherousness of turning a back to a friendly façade. Dillinger’s second prison break is a masterfully timed sequence of shuffling, scampering and strategy. And the movie’s centerpiece is a Wisconsin-woods shootout in which entrails of fog roll through the foothills, bullets whomp dirt, and the fire-spitting Tommy guns’ reports are like tennis rackets clapped in an eardrum.
And even in a film so orbited around Depp and Cotillard, a handful of actors stand out – Peter Gerety’s pontificating lawyer for Dillinger, Stephen Graham’s wantonly destructive “Babyface” Nelson, Jason Clarke as loyal right-hand man “Red” Hamilton, and Stephen Lang as Texas-Ranger-turned Fed Charles Winstead.
Public Enemies is no masterpiece – it’s unwieldy, patchy in parts and puts too soft a focus on the G-men tracking Dillinger. It’s no Heat. Call it Warmth, with a mythmaking dash of The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford.
That’s because it bulks up, with Midwestern muscle, from a violent version of The Aviator into something like Mann’s Gangs of New York. Always compelling, if a tad too composed, Public Enemies is Mann’s period-piece foyer into his modern pantheon of poetic violence.
Nick Rogers - Nick Rogers has been an editor and writer in the fields of arts & entertainment and features for the past 13 years. This isn't surprising ...
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