Director Michael Mann‘s fascination with the criminal mindset has offered both television and movie audiences some of the most compelling underworld entertainment of the last 30 years. While Miami Vice allowed him to buy a very big house, it was furnished via more intellectual efforts, such as TV’s Crime Story, the James Caan vehicle Thief, and the, at the time, legendary combination of Pacino and DeNiro in Heat (a casting coup which now seems as exciting as them remaking The Odd Couple). What has helped keep Mann a fascinating figure in cinema, beyond the DePalma‘s and Scorsese‘s of the world (face it, Marty’s living off his past), is his ability to adapt to new cinematic techniques and make them his own.
Mann’s fusion of handheld cameras and digital video, which he first explored in the intriguing, if flawed, Miami Vice movie, allows for a cinema that feels constantly alive and in motion. Mann’s stylings, along with a superb cast of Johnny Depp as 1930′s tabloid icon and bank robber John Dillinger, Christian Bale as crime buster Melvin Purvis, Billy Crudup as FBI overlord J. Edgar Hoover and the fetching, if inconsequential, Marion Cotillard as Dillinger’s love interest Billie, makes Public Enemies an engaging and highly entertaining crime drama. While historically dubious at times, the film attempts to affect a cross-pollination between Bonnie and Clyde and White Heat. Dillinger is the hero; a bank robber, yes, but mostly an honorable man in comparison to a lunatic like ‘Baby Face’ Nelson. Depp plays him with admirable weight; while still blessed with more charisma than most humans, he doesn’t let it be his default setting. Bale maintains a rigidity that seems carried over from The Dark Knight, but G-Men weren’t noted for their levity. Crudup, in many ways, gives the best performance.
Like American Gangster, Public Enemies aims for an epic quality it can’t attain, but is none the lesser for trying. Highly recommended. – [DVD]
Biography/Crime/Drama/Thriller
Rated R
DVD Release Date: 12/08/09
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