07/29/09 - Public Enemies

Public Enemies (2009, 140 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1152836/

Finally. Finally I see Public Enemies. I was anxiously awaiting this for about three or four months before it came up and then complications came up and I had to wait until about a month after its release to finally see it. Sometimes this works against a film as I'm too excited and it doesn't live up to my anticipation so we'll see if this happens this time.

Public Enemies has three main stars. First and obviously at the forefront is Johnny Depp as gangster and "public enemy number one", John Dillinger. Second is Christian Bale as the man tagged with finding Dillinger, Melvin Purvis. Third is Dillinger's girlfriend, Billie Frechette played by Marion Cotilliard. Dillinger is constantly on the run from Purvis and the Bureau of Investigation throughout the movie, eventually getting betrayed and shot in the head as he leaves a movie theater. There's a large cast of other people with minor roles but the film is headlined by these three.

I think the last movie I over hyped this much for myself was The Wrestler. Fortunately for The Wrestler, it featured an absolutely stunning performance by Rourke and a pretty good story. On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have Public Enemies which has mediocre performances from the above three and the surrounding cast along with a pretty weak script. The film jumps around from action movie to character movie to romantic movie multiple times and never really settles on what it wants to be. Instead of making the movie one of these, Mann tries to make it all of them and fails.

However, one thing that works great for Public Enemies is some of the imagery. The bank robbery scenes are filmed so that great images come from them. The trailer for this film is absolutely amazing and works these images in perfectly and I feel that this makes the trailer one of the best I've seen. It completely sucked me in after just one watch. To go along with that, the trailer, and then the movie itself, make great use of music. The music is older and fits the period. It works great. Another different thing that Mann does is his camerawork. Frequently we get an up close and personal view of the characters with the camera seemingly inches from their faces and following (somewhat shakily) their every move. I'm undecided if I really liked this technique or not but it was something different and, I felt, worthy of note.

Overall, I gave this film a 5/10. It's overall pretty good. Sadly the good parts aren't exactly the things I was expecting to be good going in to the viewing. Had Mann made this movie an action-y gangster or a great character piece exploring the conflicting interests of Purvis and Dillinger this film would be amazing. Instead he tries to do too many things and ends up getting just an okay movie.