Respond/React: Public Enemies
Fans of Michael Mann's films will like this but anyone who found Miami Vice to be slow and boring or viewers who expect some character development or any real depth or insight will be bored. "Public Enemies" is two and a half hours yet you learn nothing about any of the characters. In fact, the most interesting stuff is between Billy Crudup's J. Edgar Hoover and Christian Bale's Melvin Purvis but that lasts a handful of minutes. The film left me with a similar feeling as "The Assassination of Jesse James..."; when the lights came up I thought, "That's an interesting story. Someone should make a movie out of it."
Katey Rich's review at Cinemablend says it best.
There are a million interesting things about 1930s gangster folk hero John Dillinger, from his expert manipulation of the press to his trick of robbing banks and letting the customers keep their money. But somehow Michael Mann, who has made an entire movie about Dillinger, Public Enemies, seems interested in none of it. Letting the story plod by almost glumly, in the script he co-wrote with Ronan Bennett, Mann saves all his directorial zeal for the visual style, using high-def digital cinematography to lend the feel an urgent, crisply modern feel. The result is a film that sings in the visually dynamic sequences-- the shoot-outs, the bank robberies, any scene with Marion Cotillard-- but feels excruciatingly slow as soon as someone opens their mouth. Public Enemies is a series of theses, not a story, and nothing in Mann's bag of tricks makes it cohere.
For more reaction (with spoilers), read on.
At the end of the film, a title card comes up and tells the audience that Melvin Purvis quit the Bureau a year later and later killed himself. That seems like it would have been a more interesting story. The rise and fall of Purvis and his realization that his methods wouldn't be enough to catch Dillnger were the best parts of the film but that was only three or four beats, and one of the beats didn't even seem to fit. He calls in help from old school law enforcement types but then when they have Dillinger surrounded, he ignores them. Why he'd do this wasn't really established enough, especially since he seemed to have had an epiphany about his own shortcomings earlier.
Also, there were a few moments that just seemed to Hollywoodized. Dillinger walking out of the car, gun drawn, when Billie is arrested yet NOBODY sees him? I'm sure that event happened but I really doubt he walked out of the car as far as he did in the film. Similarly, I thought the scene with him walking into the Dillinger Investigation Unit seemed fake.
But the main problem was that the film just dragged and gave us literally no insight into Dillinger. Depp played him as a borderline emotionless man. I could believe it when nobody saw him in the movie theater because Depp kind of blended in with the HD background for most of the film. Dillinger was supposed to be a personable guy but he came off like the least intriguing person in the film. Also, the movie dragged so much that you'd never have guessed that the film really just was focused on a one year period.
While the sound in the film was great, I'm just not a fan of the HD look. I felt like it served a purpose in "Collateral" but in this movie, I didn't think it helped much.
There's a great mini-series and many great movies to be made about the stories hinted at in "Public Enemies" but this film just doesn't do a good job telling any of them.
