Public Enemies

It’s scary how much hasn’t really changed in eighty years. “Public Enemies” is the story of John Dillinger, gentleman thief undone by his uncanny ability to trust people, who became a national hero because he was bucking a system that was holding the rest of the world hostage during the Great Depression. Today, we’re cheering the 150-year jail sentence of Bernie Madoff. There’s nobody out there who wouldn’t cheer at least a little bit inside if a Dillinger showed up today and started taking GM executives for all they were worth.

That more than anything is why director Michael Mann’s latest tale of cops and robbers (he gave us the brilliant films “Heat” and “Collateral” and the pretty but considerably less brilliant “Miami Vice”) couldn’t come at a better time. Mann has admitted in interviews that making any film is essentially a crapshoot, given that trying to capture the zeitgeist on a two-year filmmaking delay is borderline impossible. This one in particular really nails a certain feeling of the present time, but the big question is just how ready audiences are for something that hits this close to home.

The film starts off with Dillinger (Johnny Depp) escaping from the Indiana State Penitentery. With a crew assembled of friends he made during his initial nine-year stay there, he begins to gut banks all over the Midwest, in particular Chicago, with his own method of storming in, scaring people into cooperation and taking a couple hostages that he promptly releases not far from the scene of the crime. Dillinger lived like a rock star for many years, having anything he wanted. One night, he decides that what he wants is Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard), a French-Canadian coat check girl at the Aragon Ballroom (film is shot in the actual Aragon among many other Chicago locales) who falls for Dillinger’s sweet, gentlemanly demeanor but has to quickly learn to deal with the danger inherent in what her new lover does for a living.

The other major storyline in the film follows Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), a well-bred FBI agent assigned to run Chicago’s field office and within that, take out Dillinger and those within his gang. Our introduction to Purvis is him chasing Pretty Boy Floyd (Channing Tatum) through a field and taking potshots at him as calmly as though he’s hunting game. Purvis is one of the steel-faced “G-men” that J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup in a deeply smarmy role) was pushing on the media as the crimefighting wave of the future, though as the film points out early on, Hoover had never actually arrested a man himself. Purvis is almost a mirror of Dillinger, though without the swaggering charm; both are deeply assured that they are good enough at what they do to get whatever they want.

The film chronicles about two years or so in the lives of these men, and it’s really a showcase for Depp, who absolutely runs away with the film as Dillinger. Dillinger was often a very serious man when he was in the midst of working, but a jovial one otherwise. Even when jovial, though, his smiles are more self-assured smirks than easy  grins, except for one moment, in which he buys Billie a fur coat, and he lets a genuine smile escape for a moment before pushing it back down. Near the end of the film, Dillinger actually walks into the FBI office (this actually happened) dedicated to his own pursuit and capture and takes a stroll. There are few actors who could nail the warranted cockiness of a man like Dillinger in the way Depp does here.

Bale is good, though he has a mostly thankless role; from the opening scene, we like Dillinger so much that Purvis is automatically the enemy. There’s one great scene, though, when Purvis consoles Billie after she is arrested for questioning, because it’s the only point in the film at which Purvis’ steely resolve breaks down, to both those in the film and those of us in the audience. Cotillard is perfect as Billie, because she is lovely and sweet early on in the film and quite the firebrand later on when she needs to be. It’s amazing to see her looking elegant when her biggest role to date was in “La Vie En Rose,” for which she won a Best Actress Oscar in 2008 and more resembled a troll than the Old Hollywood starlet she channels here.

For as much as I’ve spoken about the virtues of this film, it’s not perfect. I know Mann has for years been a big proponent of digital filmmaking, but in a period piece (especially a period piece so meticulously detailed), it takes you out of the movie at times, especially when some shots have little to no contrast at all. Also, this film made me experience again something I’ve labeled “Benjamin Button syndrome” in which there’s something about the film that loses me midway through that I can’t put my finger on. Like that overrated David Fincher epic from late last year, “Public Enemies”  does run longer than it needs to (two hours and 23 minutes) and tends to lag in places. However, this film does a far better job of compensating with legitimate action.

A note on that action: I’m very interested to see how this film does at the box office this weekend once word gets out that this is not at all the escapist cops and robbers lark the previews made it out to look like. This definitely isn’t your standard summer movie fare; it’s closer to a historical epic than it is to a shoot ‘em up. It’s mostly a dour affair, and though I have qualms with putting a spoiler warning on history, I will say that it doesn’t quite end happily.

The acting in “Public Enemies”  is excellent, going far above and beyond what it by all accounts had to be, but acting alone does not a great film make, and while I was engaged and would/will recommend it, there is still a lingering feeling that this film could have been considerably more. More than anything, the film’s title itself makes a point still applicable today. The title is plural, implying that not only was Dillinger a public enemy, but so were Purvis and the Feds, and perhaps maybe even the bankers who robbed a nation as well.

Overall score: 3/4 stars.