Review: Public Enemies

[4thofeleven]

I don’t really have much to say about this movie – its main flaw is its lack of substance. At no point did this movie convince me that John Dillinger’s story was one worth telling - the writer doesn’t seem to have found anything interesting about the person or the period to hang a movie on, and so the plot just chugs along from incident to incident, never demonstrating any real depth or meaning.

From time to time, the movie looks like it’s going to throw out an interesting idea or theme. Early on, it’s implied that Dillinger deliberately cultivates an image of himself as a hero of the common people, while at the same time, J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI are manipulating the media to get the public on their side – and examining the media and popular culture’s role in the creation of the outlaw legend would be a fascinating movie, especially when it could finish with the irony of Dillinger dying after being ambushed going to see a film starring Clark Gable as a racketeer! But then, after a few early scenes, these ideas are never raised again.

There are hints here and there that the movie is trying to contrast Dillinger’s folk hero status with his violent actions, and that his ‘romance’ with Billie Frechette is expressed primarily though demands and controlling behaviour – but again, this is never followed up on, and I find myself wondering if I was just reading too much into minor scenes in an effort to find some sort of meaning or theme to an otherwise oddly bland film.

Acting wise, Depp does as much with Dillinger as he can with the limited material he has to work with. It’s a fine performance, but this was the first Depp character in years I’ve been bored by. Dillinger as written is neither sympathetic nor interesting enough to hold my attention. Christian Bale as FBI agent Purvis is also very good, but again, the script doesn’t give him enough to work with. The movie, I feel, would have been far stronger if it had focused either on Dillinger exclusively or been almost entirely from the FBI’s perspective. Dividing attention between the two protagonists only weakens an already thin storyline.

The film also spends far too long on long, involved shootouts in which it is extremely difficult due to lighting to determine just what is going on. I do not know if it was purely the cinema I went to, but the sound balance seemed off – gunshots were deafening, which grows extremely tiresome after a few rounds of tommy-gun fire, while in comparison dialogue was frequently barely audible, to the point that it was initially unclear to me that the audience was not supposed to be able to hear Dillinger’s last words.

The film seemed often oddly self-conscious. The camera would focus a little too long on irrelevant details, seemingly overly interested in the visual details of the 1930s, rather than accepting them as normal. Irritatingly, the film also commits the cliché of having every news report heard end with mentions of key historical events, presumably so even the dullest member of the audience would know when the film was meant to be set – a pointless distraction, since the film’s soundtrack does a fine job of establishing the setting, assuming the ubiquitous fedoras didn’t give it away.

I found very little to recommend in the film; it lacks any real sense of narrative or atmosphere, and ends up containing little more than one would get from reading a biography of Dillinger's life.