Public Enemies

Starring Johnny Depp, Christia Bale,
Screenplay by Ronan Bennett and Michael Mann & Ann Biderman
Based on a book by Bryan Burrough
Directed by Michael Mann
website: http://www.publicenemies.net/

IN SHORT: zzz. [Rated R for gangster violence and some language. 140 minutes]

Ah the wild and wooly 1930s. The Great Depression. Robin Hood-type outlaws steal from the rich (the banks) and give to the poor (usually themselves) with dozens of newspapers and magazines, legit and pulp making oodles of dollars reporting and or embellishing upon the events put in motion by Baby Face Nelson(Stephen Graham), or Alvin Karpis (Giovanni Ribisi) Pretty Boy Floyd (Channing Tatum) or, as far as this film goes, John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) and his Chicago based gang.

Aside from being on the wrong end of a bullet, the excitement of the era came in the purple prose of tabloid newspaper reporters or radio newsmen like Walter Winchell. They built the reputations of bank robbers who could not be caught into something akin to criminal supermen. To balance it off, Winchell helped promote Federal officers, G-Men who would come to be known as the Untouchables. This story is not about the Untouchables, who aimed mainly at Al Capone's gang. Nor is it about Walter Winchell who is mentioned only in passing. Instead, it is about G-Man Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) and the scientific method for tracking seasoned criminals like John Dillinger via the things he left behind. Like a coat.

So much for the only interesting part of Public Enemies, which spends the rest of its time pointing out how clumsy and ineffective the early days of the G-Men squad were. When we first meet Dillinger, he is engineering a major break of his gang out of a state penitentiary in 1933 -- theoretically you remember all this from history class because there is absolutely no kind of usable background development to help you build connections to any of the characters in this film, good or bad.

As for Dillinger, he runs his band of brothers with an democratic (sic) iron fist. When one member screws up an operation, Dillinger polls the rest of the gang before dumping the lout out the door of his roadster, at high speed. Dillinger's personal love live is pretty much the same. One day at a high class restaurant he spies one Billy Frechette (Marion Cotillard) a poor girl in "a three dollar dress" who works for tips checking coats at a different night club. Dillinger decides that Billy will be his girl. When she complains she knows nothing about him he responds something along the lines of: "I was born on a farm. My mom died. My father beat me. I like movies and music and robbing banks. What else do you need to know?"

Unless you know the rest of Dillinger's story before walking in, what is presented to you is done so in a sloppy and confusing manner. We're not even going to all what we saw "wrong," since it's been a very long time since we memorized every book on 30s mobsters we could get our hands on circa age twelve. We sat twitching in the seat. Those expecting a Bonnie and Clyde style blow out from this film are really going to be disappointed.

There's not much more to say here, folks. There isn't much to this film at all.

On average, a first run movie ticket will run you Ten Bucks. Were Cranky able to set his own price to Public Enemies, he would have paid . . .

$2.00

A waste of your time and money.

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