Four stars (out of five). Rating: R, for violence, profanity and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.3.09
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The difficult trick is to make John Dillinger somehow appealing — or, at the very least, interesting — without sanitizing one of America's most notoriously vicious criminals.
Trust Johnny Depp to unerringly walk that extremely fine line.
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| Judging by Johnny Depp's portrayal of John Dillinger in this film, one would think the notorious bank robber disliked killing people, and did so only with great reluctance. History suggests otherwise, but Depp makes us believe that this guy has a semblance of conscience. |
Public Enemies, thanks to Depp's superbly nuanced performance as Dillinger, belongs in the company of Bonnie and Clyde
, as one of Hollywood's great pop-culture portraits of American crime. Indeed, director Michael Mann's Public Enemies has much in common with Bonnie and Clyde, which was billed with the lurid tag line "They're young ... they're in love ... and they kill people."Back in 1967, director Arthur Penn's unexpectedly gory crime saga was a trend-setter, foreshadowing the culture of violence that soon would pervade Hollywood. Its unsettling blend of casual brutality and glamorous star power — Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were "it" at the time — has been duplicated with equal panache by Mann, with the dazzling celebrity wattage handled just as effectively by Depp and co-star Marion Cotillard, fresh from her Academy Award win for La Vie en Rose
.Sadly, the violence in Public Enemies is nothing new, with bloody deaths by Tommy-gun a frequent occupational hazard for good guys and bad guys alike, as this narrative — scripted by Ronan Bennett, Ann Biderman and Mann, from the book by Bryan Burrough — moves inexorably toward Dillinger's well-known date with destiny at Chicago's Biograph movie theater on July 22, 1934.
Aside from Depp's excellent work, this film's distinctive style comes courtesy of Mann, who orchestrates the carnage with the same snap and panache that made 2004's Collateral
such a visceral experience. The difference is that we don't really have a virtuous and principled protagonist to root for — Christian Bale's Melvin Purvis is a bit too chill to be sympathetic — although you'll no doubt need to resist that bewitching gleam in Depp's eye. Alfred Hitchcock was famous for this ability to "trick" audiences into identifying with his many villains; we unconsciously wanted Robert Walker Jr. to reach the dropped cigarette lighter with which he planned to frame the hero in Strangers on a Train
, just as we hoped Barry Foster would successfully pry his distinctive tie pin — which might identify him to the pursuing police — from the rigor-frozen fingers of his recent victim, in Frenzy
.Mann and Depp accomplish the same feat, as Purvis and his fellow FBI agents repeatedly close on Dillinger and his associates: Despite knowing Dillinger's eventual fate, we keep hoping that he'll survive this skirmish, and then that one, and then the next ... because, darn it, Depp makes the guy too interesting to lose.
