I've been stewing for the last 24 hours trying to decide why I didn't like Public Enemies more than I did.
To be honest, I think part of the problem is that I read the book that the film is based on, Bryan Burrough's Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933–34. It's always problematic trying to evaluate a movie based on source material that is as detailed, gripping, and exhaustive as that.
The book was both epic and dizzyingly specific. Burrough's goal, it seemed, was largely to demythologize the "public enemy" era and its many colorful participants as much as possible. Potentially larger-than-life figures like bank robbers John Dillinger, Lester Gillis (aka "Babyface Nelson"), George "Machine Gun" Kelly, Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd, Bonnie Parker, Clyde Barrow, and FBI agent Melvin Purvis are depicted as the flawed human beings they were. Most of them did not come across as particularly intelligent. Perhaps the most fascinating part of the story was how the FBI in general -- and Purvis in particular -- was clearly not up to the job.
I know, I know...the book is not the movie...blah blah blah. I get it. I get that director Michael Mann needed to boil Burrough's massive tome down to a single straight-forward narrative. Unless we're talking about a 10-hour HBO miniseries (which, apparently, was the original plan), it would have been completely impossible to tell the entire story in one movie. So Mann made the simple and understandible choice to focus on Dillinger -- easily the most colorful of the era's outlaws -- and Purvis's attempts to catch him. It should be noted that John Milius already made that movie in 1973. It was called Dillinger, and starred Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Richard Dreyfuss, and Harry Dean Stanton. Check it out if you haven't seen it. It's awesome.
If I had to pick, I would have probably preferred a movie about a somewhat lesser known gangster like Pretty Boy Floyd or Babyface Nelson. But whatever. Mann picked Dillinger. That's fine. Unfortunately, however, he managed to miss almost everything that was so great about the book (and Milius's film, for that matter) and adds very little new that's interesting.
Note to filmmakers: If you're going to make a two-and-a-half hour movie about the epic battle between a notorious outlaw and a celebrated lawman and you have Johnny Depp and Christian Bale as your leads, you really have no excuse if your actors are boring. That's the biggest problem with Public Enemies. For all the visual razzle dazzle on display here (I actually liked the HD cinematography that a lot of people are bitching about), there's really not one performance that stood out. With the exception of Stephen Graham (brilliant, by the way, as the conflicted neo-Nazi in Shane Meadows' This Is England) as Babyface Nelson and French actress Marion Cotillard (Ma Vie En Rose) as Dillinger's girlfriend Billie Frechette, the supporting characters all completely run together. We get a bunch of glowering bad guys in suits and fedoras, and a bunch of glowering FBI agents in suits and fedoras. Billy Crudup is almost memorable as J. Edgar Hoover, but not for the right reasons. His performance was clichéd, one-note, and caricatured, and the obviously latex double chin was distracting.
This all leaves a void, but you would have thought that Bale and Depp would be more than up to the job of filling it. Not so much. Bale gives the pretty much the same humorlessly intense performance that he's been giving since Batman Begins, adding only a mild Southern accent to the mix. Depp, for his part, leaves nearly all of his natural charisma at the door. His performance is minimalistic and almost completely internal. He mumbles. He stares at people. A lot. When he does smile, it's just a little half twitch to his lips. Normally I would say that it's nice to see Depp prove -- after so many flamboyant turns in so many other movies -- that he can do the quiet slow-burn like the best of them...except, he's playing John Fucking Dillinger here. John Dillinger shouldn't slow burn. John Dillinger should crackle and dance like a downed power line.
Really. How do you cast Johnny Depp as John Dillinger and have it land with a complete thud? How exactly does that happen, Mr. Mann?
Without that famed charm, Dillinger's relationship with Frechette makes no sense whatsoever. Cotillard gives probably the best performance in the movie, but never once do we understand what she sees in this guy who comes off more like a mopey, potentially psychotic stalker than the famed ladies' man Dillinger apparently was. After one aborted date he shows up at her job, beats up a customer, and demands that she go with him because "you're my girl now." When she does, I have to admit I kind of hated her a little.
To be fair to Depp, the script really doesn't give him much to work with. He's either moping silently, shooting at people, or trying to deliver awful, faux-Bogartesque lines like: "Were having too much fun today to think about tomorrow." Yuck. When, after some sex, Billie asks him what he wants in life, he responds with: "Everything. (important movie pause). Right now." I mean, seriously, who farted?
Setting the performances aside, Mann and his screenplay give almost no context for what's going on, who these people are, or why any of this is interesting or important. He's more focused on capturing a series of moments than in giving any sort of big picture. I almost want to praise him for this. It's pretty ballsy to eschew exposition and character backstory altogether. But, when you have ten actors sitting up there on screen with their thumbs pretty much up their asses, it really doesn't work. After an hour, I was checking my watch. After two I was actively counting down the minutes until the lights came up and I could go get a sandwich.
I know this all sounds like I really hated this movie. I didn't, actually. I've seen worse. It's no Batman and Robin or...from what I've heard...Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. It's got some cool stuff. Some of the robberies are pretty sweet (particularly the one toward the end with Babyface Nelson). The famous wooden-gun jailbreak is neat. The final showdown at the Biograph Theater is nice and tense. But, overall, Public Enemies is pretty mediocre, and to be Michael Mann and have subject matter like this and actors like these at your disposal and then to turn around and make a mediocre movie is just outright unforgivable.
At worst, this movie should have been pulpy, ridiculous, and exciting (I don't want to talk it up too much, but you really should check out Dillinger if you haven't seen it). I would have even taken dark, pretentious, and exciting. "Exciting," of course, being the operative word here. But to just have it be kind of cold and blah is a crime. Maybe not like murder, exactly, but at least on the level of armed robbery or vehicular manslaughter.
I don't know if I've ever really loved a Michael Mann movie, but I've at least solidly liked almost all of them. The Insider and Collateral are pretty great. Heat and Manhunter are definite classics. Hell, I even liked Ali.
So I had high hopes for this one. This was going to by my movie of the summer. Oh well. Maybe G.I. Joe will kick ass.
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