CINEMA: Public Enemies

Everybody loves gangsters right? From Scarface to Carlito’s Way, Goodfellas to The Godfather, cinema has spent decades and millions of feet of celluloid telling their many varied and colourful stories on screen.

For filmmaker Michael Mann who has long been fascinated by John Dillinger, the gangster who held up banks during the Great Depression, it was finally time for him to attempt to bring his story to the screen.

However, many films have been made about Dillinger over the years by many other great directors and writers, so what would make this so special for modern audiences? Well casting, mainly, with Johnny Depp as John Dillinger and Christian Bale as his nemesis, Agent Purvis.

The story follows John Dillinger as he is released from prison in 1933 where he then embarks on a whirlwind of bank robberies across the USA, angering police and authorities in every state he steals from, and winning the attention of the newly formed Federal Bureau of Investigation headed by J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) who tasks Agent Purvis and his men to hunt him down and stop him whatever the cost. The film follows Dillinger through more than a year of robberies, drama, romance and betrayal.

There is so much to write about this film as it will no doubt end up on film studies courses all over the world, as it is not only astoundingly well directed by Michael Mann but features the use of full HD DV cameras by award-winning cinematographer Dante Spinotti.

So to start with the cinematography; it’s worth noting that back on Collateral, Mann wanted to capture the night in LA in a way that contemporary film lighting and cameras could not, so he set about developing his own camera with Sony that could capture the evening and night the way he wanted. The cameras were used again on Miami Vice, and this time around Sony’s new HD cameras have been used to capture all the action and close-ups in a hand-held, documentary style.

This means that when we witness Dillinger’s first robbery, the cameras take us inside the bank from the point of view of a gang member. This amps the action up to 11 in a scene that is stunning to watch and gives the robbery in Heat a real run for its money.

But it’s not just the action that is great; the long establishing shots of dusty old prisons, to the cityscapes of Chicago are all rendered in such brilliant detail it looks like they have traveled back in time to capture it.

The sets, props and locations are littered with the real artefacts, including Dillinger’s own cars and machine guns to the actual courthouse he escaped from and the Biograph Theatre in Chicago where he was finally stopped. This all comes together with Mann’s great directing to give us something that should easily attract awards next year.

The performances are also great, with Marion Cotillard standing out as Billie Frechette. She holds the whole film together as Dillinger’s girlfriend and shows us a wealth of emotions as she is whisked up and into his dangerous world.

Depp is at times hard to crack as Dillinger but in certain scenes a mere glance and facial expression is enough to show us how good an actor he really is. Depp’s performance also casts light on Bale, but this only highlights that the English actor is not really being pushed, and in a head-to-head scene between the two men it is Depp who wins the act-off hands down.

Support is brilliant on all counts, from Stephen Graham as a psychotic Baby Face Nelson, to Crudup as Hoover. But throughout the film watch the performance of Dillinger’s right hand man John “Red” Hamilton played by Jason Clarke, as he is quietly as good as Depp and is one to watch for the future.

Overall Public Enemies is a massive rollercoaster of a film that is epic in scale and rattles along at one hundred rounds per minute and feels more like 90 minutes than its 140 minute running time. At the end you of the movie however, you will ask yourself whether you really got to know the man behind the gangster, and what – if anything – you will remember from the experience.

This is a major flaw in one of the best films of the year and something that Mann should have nailed down before he finally brought his cherished baby to the big screen.

Mark Cappuccio