Public Enemies: MSN Review

No one does criminals better, be they Heat’s ruthless bank robber Neil McCauley or Collateral’s charismatic assassin Vincent. But he’s just as good with cops, investing the likes of Heat’s Vincent Hanna with an obsessive determination that is as admirable as it is faintly scary.

 

Mann is at it again in Public Enemies, a meticulous recreation of 1930s America that pits Johnny Depp’s dashing thief John Dillinger against driven G-Man Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) at the height of the Great Depression. Spanning a period of just over a year, the film revels in Dillinger’s reckless pursuit of unearned riches, a quest which saw him become a folk hero in the eyes of the disenfranchised masses keen to see one of their own stick it to the man. At the same time, though, Mann shows the authorities inexorably marshall their forces against him, tightening the net that would eventually see him cut down in a hail of bullets in July 1934.

 

That much we know. Strangely, though, you get the sense that Dillinger knows it too and has resolved to make the most of the time he has left before fate catches up with him. “We’re having too good a time to think about tomorrow!” he smiles with a gay abandon that can only come from the certainty he is living on borrowed time. Small wonder that Marion Cotillard’s hat-check girl Billie Frechette is drawn to his white heat, her fascination with this charming figure seems enhanced by the knowledge he won’t be around forever.

 

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Revolving around a series of bank raids, jail breaks and machine gun battles, Public Enemies delivers everything you’d expect from a gangster movie. What Mann does, though, is make it all feel real; peerless production design and hi-def cinematography whisking us back to a perfectly realised era. It oozes period authenticity. Okay, so there are times things get a tad murky, notably during a nocturnal ambush on Depp’s forest hide-out; perplexingly, some of the dialogue is also hard to hear. For the most part, however, you really feel you are there standing on Dillinger’s running board or at Bale’s shoulder as he closes in on his prey.

 

In keeping with Mann’s naturalistic aesthetic, neither Depp nor Bale are larger-than-life figures but cool and collected professionals focused on the task at hand. Stephen Graham, though, is enjoyably unhinged as the sociopathic ‘Baby Face’ Nelson, while the likes of Channing Tatum, Stephen Dorff and Giovanni Ribisi have their moments as the other members of Dillinger’s rough-and-ready crew.

 

Long, complex and a little languid, Public Enemies doesn’t provide the kind of instant fix you’ll get from other movies this blockbuster season. What it does offer, however, is a rich, good-looking and intelligent take on a well-worn genre.

Johnny Depp makes a dapper Dillinger in a stylish crime epic that entertains, thrills and absorbs.

 

 

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