Another Michael Mann Masterpiece
"Public Enemies" proves that Michael Mann is right up there with Martin Scorsese at directing compelling crime dramas. This film, based on a book detailing the nexus of John Dillinger, J. Edgar Hoover, and Melvin Purvis, covers the last year and a half in the life of the famed bank robber, who was branded "Public Enemy Number 1" by Hoover, who was building what would become the FBI. Chasing Dillinger for Hoover was Purvis, who relentlessly pursued Dillinger until the fateful night outside the Biography Theater in Chicago.
Johnny Depp plays Dillinger as a fun-loving but dangerous criminal whose only plan seems to be to live life on the edge until he falls off. As usual, his performance is engaging and utterly believable. Billy Crudup wonderfully plays Hoover as a man obsessed with growing the Bureau, obsessed with public relations, and obsessed with capturing John Dilliger, and Christian Bale plays Purvis as an intelligent, capable, and caught in the difficult position of...
"What keeps you up at night, Mr. Dillinger?" "Coffee."
"Public Enemies", helmed by famed director Michael Mann, is a thriller of the most testosterone fueled variety. It's a fast paced actioner brimming at the seams with intense shootouts and a well-stocked cast of steely-eyed, square-jawed men harboring classic narcissistic complexes. Johnny Depp makes a suave, calculating Dillinger. It's more of a manufactured character than an interpretation of the real life Dillinger, but this is of little consequence because Depp achieves grand theatrics with his sullen glare and devil-may-care attitude. He plays it much as I imagine Steve McQueen would've in his heyday, plowing through his world with a sort of darkly cool, apathetic demeanor that suggests he doesn't care one way or the other about anything.
The supporting characters are superlative as well, particularly Stephen Dorff as Homer Van Meter. There's an intensity to his character that Dorff really brings out. In fact, I didn't even recognize him at first (interestingly, he...
Disappointing
I was really expecting a bit more from this movie. The plot was rather hollow, the dialogue was hard to follow at times, and the characters were very one dimensional and uninteresting. Halfway through the movie, I found myself asking "is it over yet?" If you really want to see this, I suggest you rent it.
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