Public Enemies, dir. Michael Mann, starring Johnny Depp, released 1 July '09

[[ Warning - Some spoilers herein ]]

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John Herbert Dillinger was a household name in the 1930s. He robbed over 24 banks, escaped from jail twice and was pursued by a special FBI "Dillinger task force" until he died in a shootout with the police. Although Dillinger has since faded into relative obscurity, for an ephemeral moment this summer, the public will likely hear about Dillinger, but only because of the actor who portrays him in this month's film, "Public Enemies." That man, of course, is Johnny Depp. With effortless aplomb, he wins over the audience with his portrayal of intense, brooding men who are delightfully rough around the edges. A proverbial bad-boy, he speaks to the audience when he says in the film, "I like whiskey, fast cars, and you. What else do you need to know? Let's go."

And away we go. Dillinger starts off the film with a rough-and-tumble prison breakout, rescuing his lackeys from jail to begin a string of bank heists. After robbing a string of banks and cashing in, Dillinger lives the high life, though he is surprisingly frugal and chivalrous. He runs into Billie (played marvelously by Marion Cotillard), a girl who has spent most of her dull life on a backwater Native American reservation. He quickly wins her heart with his bravado, and they become an inseparable couple.

However, Dillinger is constantly pursued by the FBI, at times portrayed as a formidable foe, while at other times completely inept and harmless. Pitched as Dillinger's nemesis, Agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) is charged with leading a task force to track down and neutralize Dillinger and his thugs. Purvis is a straight-laced monotone FBI desk-nerd with little field experience, his voice plagued by a halting and inconsistent Southern accent. Luckily for Bale, the script lets him off the hook by leaving him very few lines to deliver.

And as Mark Twain said, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt," and that couldn't be more true for Purvis, who opens his mouth in time to prove how stupid he and his boy scout lackeys are. In fact, the film becomes a story more about the FBI's sheer incompetence as it repeatedly fails to apprehend Dillinger, who proves to be more arrogant than Donald Trump on days when his hair is expertly combed-over. At one point Dillinger walks into Purvis's task force office and asks the agents about the radio program they're listening to (without getting caught, of course). At times obnoxiously implausible, and at other times cheeky and hilarious, the FBI's antics seem to challenge the drama of the film, nearly (but not quite) demolishing its seriousness. Look out for Billy Crudup's excellent caricature performance of the ridiculous FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover.

Despite the clawless FBI antagonists, Dillinger eventually begins to fall from his criminal high life. His crime lord friends turn their backs on Dillinger after the FBI hounds the lords, and the walls begin to close around him. With nowhere to go, Dillinger and his men have spectacular, adrenaline-pumped shootouts that are refreshingly unadorned and modest. Unlike many films that portray the 1930s, this film sports one particular contemporary cinematographic fad: the "shaky cam." During the fight scenes the erratic, claustrophobic cameras make the gunfights intense and realistic. Unfortunately, the technique remains for many dialogue-driven portions of the movie.

Despite the minor cinematographic flaw, the film shines because it is carried so well by Depp's portrayal. Done masterfully and effortlessly, he blends the division between actor and subject, to the point where Dillinger seems to be playing Depp just as much as Depp is playing Dillinger. Once Dillinger morphs into a sort of "Dillinger-Depp" film presence, the character becomes a demigod of the 1930s. Depp renders the FBI good guys into lampooned fools, and he catapults Dillinger from bank thug to a mythological specimen of a bygone era.

-- Matthew Peters, written on Monday, June 30, 2009

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7/10 - Good