ViewGuide

Created Jul 04, 2009 12:52PM PST • Edited Nov 29, 2016 08:04PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Depp does Dillinger — directed by Mann, in Public Enemies. This was the most promising premiere of the summer, a perfect convergence of preeminent star in a role he was born to play – one of the most significant crime figures in American history – being directed by the maestro of high-style crime. Wow.

   Cruel expectations now having met cinematic reality, the verdict is in: Perfection awaits another movie. This movie is too cool for perfection. Big band cool: the two titans sotto voce, the music more mezzo than fortissimo. Only the gunfire pegs the meter. There’s considerable gunfire of course: Tommy Guns galore; Browning automatic rifles, shells ejecting, rounds exploding in tree trunks; shotguns blasting; Colt 45s the size of Delaware. Guns and whispers don’t a perfect movie make however.

   The line readings are in the main understated, in contrast to the over-the-top production, making for an odd mismatch, as if the entire experience is under glass. Call it Cinema Diorama, a hyper real model of life that doesn’t feel like the real thing. In part that’s because no one breaks face.¹ This was apparently a generation free of affectation, unlike we moderns. Or perhaps the limited emotional range represents an artistic decision by the estimable Michael Mann. We’ll just never know.

   It’s hard to keep the players straight without a program.² In a contest between Fedora-covered short haircuts on one side and a bunch of semi-known actors on the other, the hats win. That and the sheer number of characters parading across screen make it tough to keep all but the leads straight. Who’s Baby Face Nelson vs. Pretty Boy Floyd becomes obvious mostly in hindsight, notwithstanding they’ve got two of the coolest nicknames in the history of crime. (Dillinger’s name became a nickname. That’s how culturally significant he was.)

   Big biopics demand much exposition, which stands in opposition to deep characterization. That’s especially true here, what with a cast of dozens. Combined with the too cool line readings, the whole ends up a triumph of design and presentation but a failure of resonance.
   -————————————

   ¹ Baby Face Nelson excepted. Of course, the guy called himself “Baby Face” for Pete’s sake.

   ² Marion Cotillard’s name stands out on the poster, yet she’s the 40th credited character to appear on screen. That’s a big cast.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Depp – the coolest cat ever hatched out of middle America¹ – never sounds desperate. Coolly invulnerable, he’s tough to warm up to, even though he plays the most honorable of thieves. Interestingly, Depp’s not necessarily better looking than the real Dillinger, as a comparison between the poster and WikChip photo proves.² John D’s chin is actually better than Johnny D’s, though the movie star has better cheekbones. Given that both JDs hail from a little over 100 miles from one another, they clearly share much the same allure.

   Indeed, Depp said “I felt related to John Dillinger like he was of the same blood. He reminded me of my stepdad and very much of my grandfather. He seemed to be one of those guys with absolutely no bull whatsoever, who lived at a time when a man was a man.” Quoted in Vanity Fair about audiotapes of Dillinger’s father, Depp said “His pop sounded like my grandfather, almost exactly. So I just made the decision to sound not aggressively southern but to adopt a bit of a drawl.”

   Marion Cotillard’s roughly half as hot as Depp, clear even to a hetero-critic like me, but she does fine sharing the screen with him: her curlicued movie star visage contrasting with the angular lines of her Gablesque leading man. Looks aside, her performance strikes the perfect chord: spunky and vulnerable. She creates an instant classic moment when she threatens a G-Man interrogator that “When my Johnny finds out what you’ve done to his girl…”. In short, she’s a movie moll for the ages.

   Christian Bale doesn’t distinguish himself.

   Billy Crudup plays J. Edgar Hoover as a cross between Queen Victoria and Arnold Schwarzenegger, which seems just right. It’s perhaps the best performance in the movie, challenged only by a nonpareil portrayal of the Texas Ranger – a man among men – who delivered the kill shot that finally felled Dillinger.

   Stephen Lang, arguably the best actor of his generation,³ imbues Ranger Charles Winstead with overwhelming gravitas, emanating in part from his block head and muscular body but mostly from his seriousness of purpose and manifest competence. It’s the most memorable end-of-movie role since … I can’t remember when.

   Lang and Mann go way back, notably to when the cast credits of Mann’s landmark Crime Story series concluded with “and Stephen Lang as Atty. David Abrams,” incorruptible Federal Attorney. Is it too much to hope that Mann could create a movie or TV project starring Lang?
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   ¹ James Dean included.

   ² Thank you FBI, for putting down John Dillinger and for making such a bitching JPG of him available from your site.

   ³ I.E., the current generation, which is to say if you got Depp, DiCaprio, Rockwell, Penn and Lang together, the first four would know that the rock solid old guy is the best actor in the room.

5. Male Stars Very Good 3.5

   Depp was Great, but Bale was Good at best.

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars Perfect 5.0

   Props to Billy Crudup and Stephen Lang

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    The great Michael Mann – writer, director, producer – did himself proud with this film even if it seems more glamorized museum piece than warts-and-all account. The high style that worked with Mann’s Miami Vice (the show more than the movie) leaves Public Enemies an arm’s length recreation of history. The master of crime-as-glamour, Mann ensured that his public enemies and their pursuers would be swathed in great clothes (a 30 person wardrobe department) and have great hair (10 hairstylists). Would they be empathetically human? Not so much.

    Mann’s other questionable decision is to all but hide the deprivations of the Depression. All he gives us to see are well dressed gangsters and G-men, marbled banks and swank nightclubs. Breadlines and hobos are nowhere in sight. This too robs the story of human connection.

11. Direction Great 4.0

12. Play Very Good 3.5

13. Music Very Good 3.5

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0

    Shot in HD Video, the picture makes up in vividness what it’s lost from the warmth of film.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.3

    Brutally violent: More than a few people bleed out from vividly rendered gunshot wounds.

17. Sex Titillating 1.6

18. Violence Brutal 3.5

19. Rudeness Salty 1.7

21. Reality

    Glib 1.3

    Objections have been raised to how this movie, like so many glamorous crime movies before it, doesn’t even rise to the level of moral relativism. Rather it places Dillinger as the glorified peer of FBI agent Melvin Purvis. This is said to be a modern movie problem, traceable to Bonnie & Clyde.

    Two flies in this ointment:

    1. Gangster loving movies date back at least as far as John Dillinger himself. Hell, he was watching Clark Gable play a lovable gangster in Manhattan Melodrama the night Purvis and Winstead took him down. The legendary bankrobber clearly saw himself as dashing movie star.
    2. The gangster’s story has to be told for the movie to work, especially given that the good guys are operating largely in response to what the bad guys are doing.

    Also of note is how the movie highlights the cutting edge technology of the 1930s.

    • Ford V8s: Apparently faster than any other car on the road, this was the favored getaway vehicle. “V8” became synonymous with high performance for the rest of the 20th Century.
    • Tommy Guns: Apparently hard to acquire and much more powerful than anything owned by local law enforcement, these machine guns gave the bad guys a major tactical advantage.
    • Modern Crime Fighting: Until Hoover’s Bureau of Investigation (the yet to be renamed FBI) got involved, crooks could cross state lines with impunity, knowing that state and local law enforcement weren’t allowed to do the same. The FBI’s use of wiretapping is also nicely shown.
    • Air Conditioning: Dillinger and his lady friends went to the Biograph Theater on that fateful summer night as much because it was “Cooled by Refrigeration” as to see Gable play a gangster.

    Finally, a word about Dillinger as Robin Hood (great name for a crook, BTW). Sure he took the banks’ money and not the people’s, or so he said. This grandstanding is belied by the fact that his career pre-dated the FDIC deposit insurance program. So it seems that robbing banks then was robbing the people.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.9

    Pretty Boy Floyd was hunted down after Dillinger, not before as shown in the movie. Baby Face Nelson also died after Dillinger, contrary to the movie. The IMDB goofs page lists these and other CircoReality liberties.

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0