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Yahoo!Michael Mann loves his guns, and he knows how to shoot them—cinematically, that is. But he also loves culture, and references to movies and music always filter into his films, giving the best of them—Manhunter, Heat, Collateral, and now his John Dillinger biopic Public Enemies—a smart and signature blend of the visceral, the romantic, and the artful. With Enemies, Mann delivers a strong contender in the slim ranks of great films about the 1930s heyday of independent gangsters, a field lorded over by the masterpiece Bonnie and Clyde.
It helps greatly that Johnny Depp plays John Dillinger with an uncanny skill. Depp is best when he doesn’t have to speak much, and here he lets his brute charm do the talking, or spews such telling axioms as when wooing his desired love interest (played by Marion Cotillard), “Some of the places I’ve been ain’t so hot. Where I’m going is a whole lot better.”
Throughout the film, Dillinger is played up as an almost unquestioned anti-hero, a Robin Hood-ish figure from humble beginnings. He represents the maverick individualist American spirit in a time when the FBI (represented by Christian Bale’s aptly soulless agent Melvin Purvis) and more sinister, sweeping organized crime syndicates were just forming and changing the game. As violent as the film gets, with extended gunplay choreography, an elegiac air also prevails. Musically, the virtual theme song of the film is Billie Holiday’s “The Man I Love” and composer Elliot Goldenthal’s lush string score adds a glaze of fatalistic romance.
As usual, Mann is a slick craftsman who also understands the importance of rough edges—as through cinematographer Dante Spinotti’s dazzling mix of sleek visuals and nervous-making handheld shots. He’s a stickler for details of the historical and filmic sort. In a real way, all roads lead to Dillinger’s famed finale, gunned down from behind as he left a Chicago movie theater. Mann digs into that scene, playing off the unfolding trap outside while Depp/Dillinger sinks into the prophetic scenes of the early Clark Gable film Manhattan Melodrama inside. Bullets fly at regular intervals in this film, but so does wistful emotionality, a delicate balance that only an assured filmmaker can get to.
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