His Take/Her Take: Public Enemies

Worth the price of admission, or a waste of time? Brian McKechnie and Suzanne Ellis offer you their take on the latest movies hitting screens. Read their reviews every week, exclusively on CityNews.ca.

Let Brian and Suzanne know what you think of His Take/Her Take via email at brian.mckechnie@citynews.ca or suzanne.ellis@citynews.ca .

PUBLIC ENEMIES

Rated R
Cast: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard
Directed by: Michael Mann
Official Site IMDb

FBI agent Melvin Purvis hunts down the infamous bank robber John Dillinger.

Brian’s Take

* out of 5 stars

It’s amazing how director Michael Mann could screw up a film so badly. But that’s exactly what he did with Public Enemies. It’s the most disjointed, horribly edited, boring piece of fluff I’ve seen in the gangster genre since Mickey Blue Eyes.

The film is set in Depression-era 1930s and is loosely based on the true story of notorious bank robber John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) and the FBI agent who hunts him, Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale). Since Mann decided to shoot this on video you never really believe it’s the 1930s (looks more like a made-for-television reenactment). And although we’re only given the year 1933 it does appear to spread over a few years (why we never get an updated date to help the story make sense is beyond me).

Those are just some of the minor problems I found while fidgeting in my seat.

From the opening scene, where Dillinger is broken out of prison, I was lost. Not knowing who was who and what was what, I was completely removed from the experience. Did the reels get mixed up in the projection booth? Were we accidentally starting from the middle instead of the beginning? Nope. What I was watching was they way it was meant to be. Sadly, it left a sour taste in my mouth for the remaining two hours and fifteen minutes.

As for the acting, Bale is completely wasted as Agent Purvis and almost comes across as a joke. After Terminator Salvation and this, Bale has moved down my list of actors to watch. As for Depp, he’s never disappointed me until now. His Dillinger could have been Oscar-worthy if he was allowed to spread his wings a little. Instead we get a stiff, unintelligible performance that looks phoned in. Not much either could do with their roles the way it was written and directed.

Disjointed is the best word to describe Public Enemies (put that in your ad Universal). When Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard), Dillinger’s love interest, is introduced you never feel their connection. They don’t seem to like each other let alone be in love. And before you know it Dillinger is gone and Frechette is alone. But you don’t care because of the sloppy script. Many other characters come and go the same way and just confuse the plot more than help it.

The sound was another issue. Talking scenes are so quiet I found myself leaning forward and turning my ear. Again, I thought this was a problem with the theatre until gunshots go off and it’s loud. Real loud. So they got the sound effects right but not the sound mixing? In a day and age where every Joe on the street can shoot and edit a film technical problems like these should not be happening in Hollywood.

I really shouldn’t be surprised at any of this. Besides Heat and the 1986 film Manhunter I’m not really a fan of Mann’s work. He’s a horrible storyteller, a hack in disguise, and Public Enemies is just more proof of this. You’re better off renting Clark Gable’s 1934 Manhattan Melodrama (the film Dillinger watched before he was killed) instead of wasting your money on this mess.

Suzanne’s Take

** out of 5 stars

Public Enemies should have been good — scratch that, it should have been great. A biopic about legendary bank robber John Dillinger, with a stellar cast including Johnny Depp, Marion Cotillard, Christian Bale and Billy Crudup, and talented director Michael Mann behind the camera. Sounds promising, right? A sure thing, even? That’s what I thought too going in.

So where did this film go so horribly off the rails?

I’m not entirely sure, but I sensed problems within the first five minutes, when I found my mind wandering during what should’ve been a gripping and intense jailbreak sequence. With no set-up, we’re left wondering who’s who and why we should care. It doesn’t help that the bad guys are dressed and coiffed identically to the good guys most of the time. Is that one a thug or a cop? Oh who cares, pass the popcorn.

Of course we know top-billed Depp is playing Dillinger, but we aren’t told much else about the man who became a hero of sorts to so many during the 1930s. Those who blamed the banks for their misfortunes during the Great Depression cheered the gangster for robbing the institutions, although you wouldn’t know it from watching Mann’s film.

Dillinger rarely interacted with his adoring public if the movie is any indication, with the exception of beautiful coat check girl Billie Frechette (Cotillard) whom he charms in an instant. Depp and Cotillard are an inspired onscreen pairing and their love scenes together should’ve crackled – but they fell as flat as the rest of this poorly-patched-together flick.

The biggest crime here is how dull the film was – it’s about bank robbers and the crime fighters trying to track them down in the Dirty Thirties. How do you possibly make a boring film out of that? And yet, with a couple of exceptions — a thrilling gunfight at a remote lodge in the dead of night, and an amusing scene in which Dillinger calmly walks into the FBI office charged with tracking him down — that’s exactly what Public Enemies was.

There were a lot of elements in the plot, perhaps too many, and they all received the short shrift. The romance storyline was lacking, the cat-and-mouse chase between Dillinger and his gang, and the FBI team under hotshot Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) and boss J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup, in an impressive though brief performance), should’ve been far more engaging, and lastly the biography of Dillinger himself was a disappointment.

I didn’t know much about Dillinger going in to the film, and while I don’t expect a history lesson from a big budget Hollywood flick I was hoping for a bit of insight into why he did what he did (was it simply greed or something more?), and the reason his legend endures.

Depp applies himself to every role he’s in and makes the most of what he’s given to work with — his Dillinger is a charmer and Depp has never looked better onscreen — but given the lack of context, it’s a strain to feel anything when the lawmen eventually do catch up to him.

As for Bale, he’s stone-faced throughout, perhaps still in John Connor mode from Terminator Salvation, and the Purvis character fails to make an impression.

Other talented actors make brief appearances, among them Lili Taylor, Leelee Sobieski, and Giovanni Ribisi, but blink and you’ll miss any one of them.

The whole thing feels like one big bust.