Public Enemies

Public Enemies (***1/2)

A few years removed from his modern day crime dramas Collateral and Miami Vice, Michael Mann decides to take a stab at a prohibition-era gangster movie with Public Enemies, bringing along a powerful tandem of lead actors in the form of Johnny Depp and Christian Bale. The film looks a little bit more like a traditional movie than Collateral--which was shot mostly on hand-held digital cameras at night on location in LA, without a lot of the usual preparation that goes into shots using traditional film, like setting up lighting. Nevertheless, there are some shots that aren't entirely dissimilar from the style that Mann established in Collateral, with a lot of close-up, shaky, hand-held camera shots that frantically track characters, and an overall sense of being directly in the middle of what's taking place.

Johnny Depp is our protagonist playing John Dillinger, the most notorious amongst a loose alliance of bank robbers that included other legends of crime like George "Baby Face" Nelson. He seems to fancy himself in some ways as a Robin Hood type of figure. We see him cleaning out a bank vault, but then on the way out making a point to hand back the money customers and tellers have nervously pulled out of their pockets in anticipation of him demanding it. He's not against "the people", just the banks. At the same time though, he doesn't seem to see what he does as some sort of crusade against the evils of social stratification, but rather just sort of what he does to "live in the moment." Confronted with the reality that there's a nationwide manhunt for him which will certainly eventually catch up to him, Dillinger simply says "We're having too much fun today to be thinking about tomorrow." At a party, he becomes infatuated with a woman named Billie Frechette, and when he meets her again as she's working at a coat check, he roughs up a guy impatiently waiting for his coat, and tells her to leave with him because "You're with me now," and people who are with John Dillinger don't work at coat checks. As free-wheeling as he is, though, he's also not a psychopath, which puts him at odds with his frequent cohort Baby Face Nelson, who during one bank robbery starts firing randomly at onlookers as they're making their way to their getaway car.

After we're sufficiently introduced to Dillinger and his gang, we're introduced to their counterparts on the other side of the law. Christian Bale is Melvin Pervis, a federal agent who we first meet in the woods as he pursues--and eventually calmly guns down with a rifle--"Pretty Boy" Floyd, another notorious fugitive. Pervis becomes the poster boy for J. Edgar Hoover, who you might know from history either as the dude who created the FBI, or the dude who liked to cross-dress a lot. Evidently, here in 1933, Congress isn't quite sold on the whole idea of the FBI as a crime fighting organization, chastises Hoover during a hearing, and refuses to increase his funding. Hoover, nevertheless, uses what resources he has to set up a massive manhunt for Dillinger & co. with Pervis as point man. Christian Bale always has a tremendous, commanding presence about him which goes a long way, but even still, his character isn't really all that interesting here, especially compared to what the movie does with Dillinger. Other than one scene towards the movie's conclusion where he makes a decision regarding the morality of the FBI's tactics, basically the whole of Bale's character is that he's a guy who really, really wants to catch John Dillinger.

Watching the FBI investigation itself unfold though is a lot of fun though. I'm banking under the assumption that the movie and the book upon which its based did their homework, and that the equipment and tactics used are fairly accurate to what was used in reality. A lot of it seems to basically mirror the tactics that are used today, only utilizing cruder, older technology. The resulting effect makes it look like a weird steampunk version of Enemy of the State or something. The FBI puts a wiretap on the phone's of Dillinger and his girlfriend, but since its 1933 all the conversations are recorded onto phonographs. All of it is done in a room which is completely dark, except for the lights on the massive banks of phone line connections, making it look kind of like the room that controls the superlaser on the Death Star.

There are some great looking exterior shots as well, as set pieces of old Chicago are woven seamlessly into Michael Mann's frantic, always in motion shots. One that particularly stands out in my memory is a drive-by shot of the Art Institute. The atmosphere for the entire film is great. I'm convinced that the tommy gun is the ultimate crime movie weapon. They're obnoixiously big and loud and its hard not to look like you're completely bad news while you're carrying one. There's a scene where the FBI tracks down Dillinger and Nelson to a backwoods safehouse in Wisconsin which leads to a middle of the night gunfight which at times is lit pretty much entirely by the flashes created by the machine gun fine being exchanged. It contains no music and absolutely none is necessary for it to be thrilling.

Some might find the actual plot of Public Enemies to be a little bit simplistic and predictable, and indeed I don't think anyone will walk out of the theatre saying "Wow, I didn't see that coming" in regards to the ending or any other point of the movie. And while I imagine that the movie gets the broad strokes of the real-life story of John Dillinger correct, there are times when it seems embellished to the point of it threatening your suspension of disbelief, as when Dillinger just sort of moseys into the crime unit that's in charge of investigating him, and no one seems to notice who he is, even as he asks what the score of the Cubs game is. Nevertheless, Michael Mann manages to put a tremendous amount of energy into scenes like the nighttime gun fight described above, and there's more than enough inherent drama in the escalating duel between the FBI in its birth pangs and the most wanted bank robbers at the end of what the film's opening title card calls the "golden age of bank robbery" to draw you in and keep you drawn in.