I saw
Public Enemies today, and it has earned a 6/10 rating from me. I'm too lazy to write a nice coherent review, so:
Cons:
• Filming in hi-def digital - I don't really need to see everyone's pores!
• The "shaky cam" effect used
• Christian Bale's ATROCIOUS accent and often wooden acting
• Elliot Goldenthal's melodramatic, bombastic score
• Marion Cotillard attempting and (failing epically) to hide her accent
• Marion Cotillard's crappy stylist who made her hair look like a fucking rat's nest
• No character development/fleshing-out
• No context for/explanation of Dillinger's status as a folk hero
Pros:
• Stephen Lang's performance as Agent Winstead
• Johnny Depp's ageless face
• Billy Crudup as J. Edgar Hoover! So entertaining!
• Absolutely gorgeous art direction
• The old-school jazz
This missed being a really terrific film by
that much, but I honestly can't put my finger on why. As an art movie, I loved it, but there was simply no dramatic substance. I see why Michael Mann directed and wrote it the way he did, but a movie is fiction, not fact - that role belongs to a documentary. As I walked out of the theatre, I realized that I didn't give a shit about a single character, even Dillinger. If you're going to make the movie less about the characters and more about "the bigger picture" or whatever, fine, but it was not the case here. Mann could've easily made a movie about the era itself, why Dillinger was so revered, etc. etc., but that was only hinted at. Manohla Dargis of the
Times praised it for being a "new kind of gangster story to fit the times, one that makes room for greater ambivalence, and lawmen and outlaws who are closer to one another in temperament and deed." Well, no, that ambivalence has been addressed in movies before, even in Mann's own
Heat. Anyway, I will shut up now. Interesting movie, not without its flaws, but worth the price regardless. See it as a costume drama, it's most pleasing that way.