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 Review: Watching "Public Enemies" |
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 In real life, gangsters are nasty, vicious and generally lacking in human values.
But in the movies, they always seem cool, not least because they’re portrayed by really cool actors such as James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart. You can’t help but like these guys, most of the time, and they’re usually a lot more fun to root for than the bland G-men on their trail. This gangster coolness reaches its pinnacle in the new film “Public Enemies,” because the bank robber John Dillinger is played by one of the coolest actors alive: Johnny Depp. And since the FBI agent charged with bringing an end to Dillinger’s reign of terror is played by Christian “So Intense It’s Tiresome” Bale, it’s pretty easy to cheer for Depp who, when he isn’t killing people or beating them up, is as charismatic and charming as he’s ever been on screen.
I first learned about 1930s bank robber John Dillinger from a children’s almanac years ago, and he seemed cool even then. I learned that he was gunned down outside a movie theater, and that he’d once escaped from jail by carving a gun out of wood and tricking the guards. He seemed like a daring and ingenious fellow, but “Public Enemies” director Michael Mann makes it clear that he was also dangerous and volatile, enamored with his own celebrity and frighteningly remorseless when it came to dispatching innocent people. When he turns to a banker and quietly says, “You can live a coward or die a hero,” he seems like a very scary fellow.
Depp is the best thing about “Public Enemies,” and if the movie is worth watching in the theater, it’s because of him — he’s charismatic, cunning, sly, sexy and mysterious. What’s curious about the film is how, aside from Depp’s performance, so little of it lingers in the memory. Which comes as something of a surprise, because “Public Enemies is directed by Michael Mann, one of the better visual stylists and storytellers now working in American film. Mann cut his teeth on the TV show “Miami Vice,” and went on to make a number of serious and intelligent films about lonely men, doing the sorts of things that make men lonely.
These films include: “Manhunter,” an early take on Hannibal Lecter, starring “CSI’s” William Petersen, “Heat,” an epic cops and robbers film with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, “The Insider,” an in-depth look at the “60 Minutes” expose of the tobacco industry, and “Collateral,” a thriller in which Jamie Foxx plays the unlucky cab driver who picks up a hit man played by Tom Cruise.
These are all good films, and yet I didn’t love any of them. They seemed cold and methodical and, in the end, unlovable, and “Public Enemies” inspires similar feelings of admiration and detachment. For all its panache, the film doesn’t bring anything new to the gangster genre, and strains for an operatic grandeur that it never quite achieves. Some critics have described “Public Enemies” as a revisionist gangster film, which I don’t fully understand. Sure, Depp’s Dillinger is different from the gangsters of classic Hollywood film — he’s quieter, more internal, less given to making wisecracks — but I saw more similarities than differences.
Like many film gangsters, he’s self-destructive, cunning and ruthless; his lifestyle seems more attractive and interesting than Bale’s, and his life is both romantic and doomed. “Public Enemies” turns Dillinger into a tragic icon, takes the old gangster myths and legends and gives them a new shine, but doesn’t do anything all that memorable or different. Which isn’t to say that “Public Enemies” is a bad film. It isn’t. It’s engaging and entertaining, and Depp is never anything less than riveting. But great? It wants to be, but doesn’t come close.
By Sara Foss (Daily Gazette.Com)
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