Shoot 'em up and spit 'em out
Johnny Depp steps into the role of antihero John Dillinger with his usual panache
By Alex Field 07/09/2009
Public Enemies
Directed by: Michael Mann. Starring: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Mario Cotillard, Billy Crudup, Stephen Dorff, David Wenham and Giovanni Ribisi. Rated R for gangster violence and some language.
2 hr, 23 min.
Michael Mann’s latest offering of aggressive shoot ‘em up gangster drama could have felt like a previous lame attempt, however, Public Enemies, despite its flaws, is no Miami Vice. Mann conducts a fine cast and tells the flashbang story of John Dillinger, a tale that powers through a marathon of fast-paced shootouts and narrow escapes to its inevitable ending.
At the opening of the film, Dillinger masterminds a prison breakout, stealing away with a gang of his pals from the jail where he spent nine years after stealing 50 dollars from a grocery store. Thirteen months after the prison break that opens the story, when his crime spree ends, Dillinger has robbed two dozen banks and four police stations, and escaped from prison twice.
Much like the DeNiro/Pacino face-off that was Heat, director Mann pits a villain against a hero here, and plants the audience deep inside their heads. In Heat, Mann created DeNiro’s bank robber and Pacino’s L.A. city cop as tragic characters, and the two heavyweights carry the film together, facing off in the end with explosive dialogue and gunfights. However, with Public Enemies, Mann undoubtedly spends more time with his sympathetic villain, in Depp, than with his hero, Christian
Bale, who plays FBI officer Melvin Purvis. As a result, the film is Depp’s from start to finish, as he smash-tumbles his way into every relationship, gunfight and bank vault in his path.
Bale ripples with livewire intensity as always, playing Purvis with steely-eyed determination as he takes down bank robbers and nicknamed hoodlums like Pretty Boy Floyd.
Shootouts have become Michael Mann’s forte, and he plays his gunshots loud. A spectacular extended-set piece features a gunfight that takes place at a forest retreat where Dillinger’s gang was holed up. The shootout is quickly followed by a foot race and a car chase featuring strong character actors like David Wenham, Giovanni Ribisi, Stephen Dorff and Billy Crudup, who plays FBI head J. Edgar Hoover.
Ironically, over the course of his crime spree Dillinger becomes a kind of Robin Hood of the Great Depression in the press, though Mann doesn’t spend much time with this idea. Apparently, Dillinger was seen to give a few dollars back to the customers inside the banks before he went outside to drop law enforcement officials with a spray of bullets from his Tommy submachine gun.
In Depp’s portrayal of Dillinger we get to know a man who had far too much confidence for the good of anyone around him, and with such problematic hubris, the FBI keeps showing up as if they were Dillinger’s own entourage. At the time, Dillinger’s confidence paired with street smarts, made him the bank robber that drove J. Edgar Hoover to create a special task force just to find the man.
Johnny Depp burns bright in the role of John Dillinger, the antihero you want to root for, with a sliver of a charming smile wearing a pencil thin mustache. Depp plays the charmer when he meets Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard) who would become his girlfriend, and he moves in like he’s going for the bank vault. “I like baseball, movies, good clothes, fast cars and you. What else do you need to know?”
Dillinger truly was a character forged in another age, and his prison escapes astound and delight here, as Depp and crew slip past authorities all brazen bravado. In one prison escape, Depp and crew break out from the inside of jail, protected by cops and soldiers alike, using a bar of soap as a gun.
The film barrels down at the audience in much the same way, with a bluffing sort of macho bravura and a slight poetic wink. But we’re so taken by the scene set before us, we can’t help but wink back.
Alex Field is an aggressive film lover who watches movies not quite daily. His book The Hollywood Project was published in 2004. By day he is a book editor, by night he blogs at alexanderfield.blogspot.com.
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