Public Enemies- Movie Review

For some months now, Public Enemies has been named as the thinking person's event movie. It's neither a sequel movie nor spin-off, features no giant robots; rather, this is a crime epic of the type that polymath Heat director Michael Mann specialises in – set during the Great Depression to boot, giving it a further, timely nobility.

Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies” has never lacked for interest, or interesting information. Back in the 1930s, we all were knowing, the FBI was simply called the Bureau of Investigation before it was being formally Federalized. Mr. Mann has make the best use of the movie to conduct his own investigation of an era when Edgar Hoover and his agents were locked in self-promotional conflict with self-mythologizing criminals. This Hollywood New Releases gangster thriller, starring Johnny Depp as Public Enemy Number One, the bank robber John Dillinger, and Christian Bale as Dillinger’s G-Man scourge, Melvin Purvis, is nicely detailed and flawlessly crafted, an elegant evocation of Depression-era America and its fascination with crime. What the movie lacks is any sense of exaltation- it’s joyless by choice—although moments of passion burst through the prevailing foreboding like muzzle flashes in the night.

Mr. Depp’s performance sets the idea. This time the actor gives himself, heart and head, to a portrayal of a tightly disciplined not-so-bad guy who speaks in collision (“What’s on your mind?” his lawyer asks. “The electric chair,” he replied), who comes to enjoy the public’s commendation, and struggles to reconcile the risks he runs for money, plus a generous measure of fame, with the love he feels for his beautiful girlfriend, Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard). It’s an impressive performance, rather than an exciting one, and for a while Mr. Bale’s work is of a piece—his Purvis seems to be Dillinger seen darkly in a mirror. All too often, though, the G-Man sounds and even looks like the Dark Knight, voice stuck in ideal talks, eyes burning beneath a fedora carapace.

For watch Videos of Public Enemies CLICK HERE