Public Enemies (2009)
Directed by Michael Mann
Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger's charm and audacity endear him to much of America's downtrodden public, but he's also a thorn in the side of J. Edgar Hoover and the fledgling FBI. Desperate to capture the elusive outlaw, Hoover makes Dillinger his first Public Enemy Number One and assigns his top agent, Melvin Purvis, the task of bringing him in dead or alive.
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Rare positives include art direction, production design and costumes that are seamless in their period flavor, and a handful of arty shots (one, taking place in a movie theater, is a wily reference to the famous moment in Alfred Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train" set at a tennis match).
There's a shot in a movie theater that reminds us of the tennis match in Strangers on a Train (1951).
Otherwise, were the audience in Manns marvelous little homage to the Strangers on a Train tennis match, looking left and right and up and down in a theater and still missing everything.
Mann’s homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train” — a bit in a movie theater where we notice Dillinger because he’s the only person whose head is not moving back and forth — is clever.
Depp is charismatic but his Dillinger is a wan copy of Warren Beatty in “Bonnie and Clyde,” even paraphrasing a Beatty line, “I’m John Dillinger.
This hollow gangster-driven outing, which trades on Mann's reputation, is not in the same league as "The Untouchables" or "Bonnie and Clyde."
Other later-period movies about that era — Bonnie and Clyde, for instance, or even John Milius' 1973 Dillinger — had fun with the old cars, the wardrobes, and the ricky-ticky music.
It fits neatly on the shelf with "Bonnie and Clyde" and "The Godfather."
On a visual scale, it's technically proficient and impressive, but on an emotional level, it lacks the cinematic gravitas to stand alongside classic gangster epics like “Bonnie and Clyde” and “The Untouchables.”
Obvious candidates for comparison are Arthur Penn's 1967 touchstone, Bonnie and Clyde , and Brian De Palma's 1987 The Untouchables .
This hollow gangster-driven outing, which trades on Mann's reputation, is not in the same league as "The Untouchables" or "Bonnie and Clyde."
On a visual scale, it's technically proficient and impressive, but on an emotional level, it lacks the cinematic gravitas to stand alongside classic gangster epics like “Bonnie and Clyde” and “The Untouchables.”
Sadly, this misfire is no classic like “Bonnie and Clyde” — it’s not even as good as “The Untouchables.”
Public Enemies, set in the "golden age of bank robbery," when the likes of Baby Face Nelson, Ma and Pa Barker, and Bonnie and Clyde were looting and shooting across the land, is the first A-list Depression-era crime pic since Brian DePalma's The Untouchables.
The results are a far more subdued affair than a summer popcorn movie like “The Untouchables” or fictionalized films set in Chicago’s gangland setting such as the Coens’ “Miller’s Crossing” or “Road to Perdition.”