DEPP AS DILLINGER

2009-07-02
By Sergio A. Mims

CAST:  Johnny Depp
               Christian Bale
               Marion Cotillard
               Billy Crudup
WRITTEN BY: Michael Mann, Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman
DIRECTED BY: Michael Mann
*** ½ THREE AND HALF STARS

With his new knockout  film, Public Enemies, it’s clear from the outset that director Michael Mann (Collateral, Miami Vice, Ali, Last of the Mohicans) is out the break the rules for 30’s gangster movies. Forgoing the commonly strict, formalized studio approach seen in the genre (see classic 1930 and 40’s Warner Bros ) from Public Enemy, Little Caesar and White Heat to Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather, Mann takes a decisively radical approach.

With heavy use of hand held camera work, dark hued lighting, startling sweaty close ups and a raw sound track mix and, Mann approaches the often told story of John Dillinger’s crime spree through the Depression Era Midwest and FBI G-Man Melvin Purvis’ dogged pursuit after him more like a rough- edged docudrama.

Like Arthur Penn’s groundbreaking 1967 Bonnie and Clyde which intentionally borrowed the jarring and (at the time) revolutionary techniques of the 1960’s French new wave directors like Truffaut and
Goddard,  Mann goes for an almost reality-TV,
documentary approach.  Even the standard climactic shootout seems like a street battle in war torn Iraq rather than the shootout between the good guys and the bad guys we’ve come to expect from such films.

The film is all grime and rough edges (in a good way) with Johnny Depp’s Dillinger, instead of the usual romanticized Robin Hood who steals from the greedy banks to give to the poor, is an emotionally closed off, ruthless psychopath who steals money for himself and his gang. His only redeeming human quality is his somewhat sweet romance with a star struck hatcheck girl (Cotillard) with a thing for bad boys. Bale’s Purvis is more a cog in the crime busting machine, remote, faceless and lacking in personality, but politically savvy enough to heap public praise on the tightly wound J. Edgar Hoover (Crudup).

However unlike the usual valiant and true G-men, as in De Palma’s The Untouchables, Purvis’ team in Enemies are a rag tag bunch of idiots, sadistic stumblebums and knuckleheads not that distant from their criminal adversaries.

If there is one glaring fault with Enemies, which is without question Mann’s best film since Heat, it is his annoying use, as he did in his last two films  - the overrated Collateral and the sluggish Miami Vice - of shooting on HD video instead on film. Mann may think he’s being cutting edge and innovative, but the fact is that video is still inferior and less forgiving than film.

The result gives Enemies a cheap look with pallid, sickly skin tones and a smeary, jerky quality to low light and action sequences. It’s a blurring of details that wouldn’t have happened on film. One wishes Mann would go back to using the old medium since his earlier films like Heat, Thief and Last of the Mohicans virtually pop from the screen.

Still Public Enemies is a solidly made, consistently interesting film that tries to, and achieves for the most part, rewrite the film history of the gangster

Film critic, lecturer and festival consultant Sergio Mims covers all things film from the city that works, Chicago. He is a regular contributor to EbonyJet.com.