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Public Enemies

The opening title card informs us that Public Enemies takes place in 1933, which is apparently the golden age of bank robbery. After reading this note we know what we’re in for. Michael Mann is bringing us back to the Great Depression. Not to a time when hardworking families suffered and the honest man couldn’t get a break, but when bandits ruled America, robbing banks in style, wanting to rule the world. And if it wasn’t for the annoying antics of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, we might still be privileged to live in a world with great men like John Dillinger. As played by Johnny Depp, Dillinger is the essence of cool. He wears pinstriped suits, perfectly shaped fedoras, and rose tinted glasses. Behind those glasses is a pair of eyes that views the world as his for the taking. They fail to see the boundaries of right and wrong. Behind his eyes is a brain. Maybe. I’m never quite sure what Dillinger is thinking. I know he likes movies, fast cars, whisky, and the dopey hat check girl Billie Frechette. He states these pleasures to Billie in a spurt of dialogue that is delivered with confidence and fluidity. In fact, all of the dialogue is spoken this way. What are meant to be scenes of conversational dialogue, even intimate scenes between Dillinger and Frechette, come across as historical figures in a high school debate. It’s not that Dillinger isn’t thinking, it’s that he was written not to have or need a brain. He’s like the scarecrow without the admirable ambition. When he meets with his associate Frank Nitti (Bill Camp) who used to help him hide from those men with badges who keep chasing him for some reason or another, he finds that Nitti is now running a lucrative bookmaking organization. Nitti attempts to explain that what Dillinger makes from an entire bank heist, Nitti makes every day. Dillinger looks angry and confused. He doesn’t get it. He would realize that he doesn’t need to stick up bank tellers to steal money, if he only had a brain.

I’m not quite sure what director Michael Mann wants me to take away from this version of Dillinger’s story. There are various allusions to Dillinger as a folk hero. He robs from the bank, but makes sure that the civilians receive their money. Is Dillinger making some social statement against the corrupt powers of the government? Well if he is, he never admits as much. Perhaps he just likes being a celebrity and realizes that if he treats civilians with respect he’ll be better liked. He blatantly tells Billie, “I rob banks.” However, Dillinger is lacking the motivation or general purpose of that line as it was proclaimed twice in Bonnie and Clyde. The eponymous gangsters of that film declared that statement as if it were an honor. They were counter-revolutionary figures, living off youthful exuberance, fetching nervousness, and a distinctly proclaimed social conscience. Dillinger, instead, echoes a different gangster in his proclamation to want to be, “top of the world,” conjuring up the image of James Cagney screaming his lungs out, and about to be burnt to a crisp in White Heat. Mann is just referencing other gangster movies, bringing with him nothing new, besides the fact that this film is shot in a high definition video, and what we’re left with is a protagonist without any ambitions or purpose for existence.

Being a Michael Mann film, showing the gangsters in not enough, we also need a grotesque portrait of the FBI. Mann is obsessed by opposition, whether it be cops and robbers (Heat), Colonial and Native American (Last of the Mohicans), or professional boxers (Ali). Unfortunately, Mann doesn’t spend the time developing both stories as he did in Heat. Instead, we’re left with a portrayal of J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) as a neurotic mess. A man in a tight-fitted suit, with greasy hair, filled with nothing but rage. His star pupil is Melvin Purvis, who focuses all his efforts on capturing public enemy number one, John Dillinger. Christian Bale plays Melvin Purvis, or more appropriately delivers his lines forcefully. Bale, as previously shown in The Dark Knight, possesses the uncanny ability to diminish a co-leading role into a marginal supporting one. Little is revealed about Purvis besides that he wants to get Dillinger. Dillinger and Purvis first meet after Purvis initially catches Dillinger, who escapes from two prisons in this film, although Mann never shows him coordinating these plans. They say a few words; Dillinger gets the last laugh, end of story. The next time they meet is in the film’s centerpiece, an elaborate ambush on Dillinger and his associates in the woods. Among Dillinger’s associates include Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham), presented to justify the plurality of the title. Nelson is less developed here than he was in the Coen Brothers surrealistic musical, O Brother, Where Art Thou? At least in that feature Nelson was allowed to indulge his inner killer by shooting cows on the side of the road.  In this film he’s barely a presence; more talked about than seen. Overall, the shootout in the woods doesn’t work. The exterior scenes are too chaotic to follow, and the interior scenes in the cabin are just poorly photographed. Mann uses source lighting, allowing the room to be coated in orange, which makes these fearless gangsters look like oompa loompas.

One character, very drunk, makes just about the worst James Cagney impression I’ve ever heard. That’s what this movie is. It’s a Universal film pretending to be a revisionist rendition of the Warner Bros. Gangster films. It’s a bad impression of William Wellman’s film The Public Enemy, starring Cagney. If only it had been more homage than revision. This film could have used the other’s gritty realism, instead of the fantasy world in which Public Enemies comfortably resides. I also wouldn’t have minded if someone had shoved a grapefruit in Billie Frechette’s face when she began to cry.

-Jason Bardin

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