What better way to captivate an audience during a recession than allow them to savor a well-orchestrated bank robbery? Outlaws like John Dillinger became folk heroes during the Great Depression era, when the mood that dominated the nation was strikingly similar to today’s atmosphere. Michael Mann, the acclaimed director of Heat and Miami Vice, beautifully orchestrates this dramatic confrontation between the gangster world and the emerging federal crime-fighting force. The director’s commitment to veridic filmmaking offers a fresh perspective on this historic episode rendered in focused, high-definition images.
Without question, the film rewards the audience with the satisfaction of revenge against the rapacious banks that loom over their daily existence. Nevertheless, despite its directorial mastery, Public Enemies fails to completely engage the viewer on a personal level.
A Symphony of Gun Shots
The film opens with one of Dillinger’s famous escape plans and quickly evolves into a sequence of violent confrontation scenes. After Dillinger (Johnny Depp) helps his friends escape from the Indiana State Pen, the audience follows him through numerous shooting sprees, car chases, bank robberies and narrow escapes masterfully staged by Mann. Nevertheless, the film is not all about noise. As it progresses, it reveals its quiet side, which becomes significant in humanizing Dillinger’s character. Elliot Goldenthal’s score, with its somber, nostalgic tones, mourns Dillinger’s march towards death, while Otis Taylor’s blues infuses this gangster saga with an original American flavor.
Recreating the Depression-Era Hero
Based on Bryan Burrough’s book Public Enemies, Mann’s film brings to life John Dillinger’s short-lived adventure. It was definitely not an easy task to recreate this controversial Depression-era hero, the man who became “public enemy number one” while still mesmerizing American public opinion. In preparing for his role in Public Enemies, Johnny Depp made use of all the records available on Dillinger. As the actor confesses in an interview entitled “Johnny Depp’s Great Escape” in the July 2009 issue of Vanity Fair, he went as far as searching for recordings of Dillinger’s voice in an attempt to stay true to the real Dillinger’s persona.
Depp plays a relaxed Dillinger whose mischievous half-smile captures audiences from beginning to end. His performance, as controlled as always, is an amalgam of soft-spoken lines and mysterious silence, punctuated by outbursts of anger. While elegant and subtle, Depp’s performance paradoxically diverts from the real Dillinger, a man who didn’t really have everything under control. In the last months of his life, John Dillinger became an isolated figure, marginalized by the mob and hunted by the FBI. He was alone and most likely deluded about his national hero status. The movie fails to convey the desperate nature of this no exit situation. Johnny Depp’s character never comes across as a wounded, cornered animal. He remains self-contained and confident until the very end.
Dillinger’s Sidekicks and Antagonists
The trouble with Public Enemies seems to originate in the script, which focuses on creating a cool Dillinger and often neglects narrative logic. The film as a whole lacks that sense of inevitability that is expected of a cops-n’-robbers flick. On an intellectual level, the viewer is aware that every minute takes Dillinger closer to his death, but the danger is not perceived viscerally. There is an episodic feeling about it, a lack of cohesion between the scenes that breaks the intensity of the film every time it approaches its peak.
In the busy landscape of the film, the members of John Dillinger’s clique are reduced to mere vehicles that perform a function until they are no longer needed. Too many characters die before the viewer gets the chance to know them, to develop any kind of attachment to them. The final conversation between Dillinger and Red Hamilton (Jason Clarke), the last one of his friends to die, becomes philosophical and, in a cliché scene, Red predicts his own death. When it finally happens, the emotional impact is minimal. It would have helped the film to let this character develop in a few scenes.
There is, of course, the effervescent Baby Face Nelson (played by Stephen Graham), who lights up the screen with his passion for violence, but the audience’s encounters with him are too brief to establish any real connection to this character. As is the case with most of Dillinger’s friends, the audience remains indifferent to his fate.
The viewer was supposed to have mixed feelings about Melvin Purvis (played by Christian Bale), the FBI agent who receives the task to solve the Dillinger problem. He has no problem with the “vigorous interrogation” of suspects, as suggested by Hoover (Billy Crudup) himself, but, at the same time, he comes to Dillinger’s girlfriend’s rescue when she is subjected to similar tactics. Despite such glimpses of humanity, this embodiment of the law lacks charisma and reminds of Hugo’s uptight Inspector Javert in his obsession with Dillinger.
It is Johnny Depp’s costar, Marion Cotillard, who gives the most moving performance as Billie Frechette, Dillinger’s love interest. With her vulnerability and her stubborn optimism, she is the one who keeps hope alive until there is nothing more to hope for.
Bye Bye, Blackbird
The scenes where Dillinger connects with Billie are the ones that humanize his character the most and transform him from a myth into a real person. Hope is finally gone from Billie's eyes and a devastating sadness replaces it as she listens to John’s last words for her, “bye bye, blackbird” (a reference to the song that was playing the night they met). A close-up shot of Billie’s face reminds the audience of the impact Dillinger had on other lives. He was, after all, a hero because other people loved him. It is their loss that the viewer feels in the end.
- Produced by: Universal Studios
- Director: Michael Mann
- Screenplay by: Michael Mann, Ronan Bennett, Ann Biderman
- Runtime: 140 minutes
- References: “Johnny Depp’s Great Escape”, Vanity Fair, July 2009.
