7/2/2009 1:35:00 PM
"Public Enemies" hits the mark with a blast from a Tommy gun
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By Jim Cornelius
News Editor
John Dillinger was not a good guy.
John Dillinger robbed banks. He wasn't above taking hostages and if someone got in his way, he didn't hesitate to kill. He became an icon because a lot of people didn't like banks much during the Great Depression and because he was audacious and charasmatic as all get out.
"Public Enemies" captures all of that. Director/producer/writer Michael Mann doesn't try to explain John Dillinger. Dillinger robs banks because that's where the money is. It's what he does; he's good at it and he knows it. There's no "origin story;" Johnny Depp is not asking, "what's my motivation here?"
That's a key element in the tour de force that is "Public Enemies": people do what they do for reasons that are hard to see, reasons that they probably can't explain to themselves. Dillinger may have been scarred by a rough childhood and a long stint in prison. Or maybe he just wants what he wants and robbing banks is the way to get it. Nobody's psychoanalizing him here.
"Yeah, I organized the prison break. Why not?"
Why did Billie Frechette fall for Dillinger? You can figure it out. Mann gives you enough to clue you in, but he's not gonna draw you a map. Poor girl, half-Indian and looked down on. Never been anywhere or done anything in her life. And a force of nature has decided that she's his girl. Why not?
Why is Melvin Purvis so obsessed with catching Dillinger? True to the time, he doesn't explain himself. It's his job and he's going to get it done, no matter how many times he fails and screws up.
"Public Enemies" is loaded with great performances from a deep supporting cast. But Johnny Depp carries the film on the strength of his own curious charisma. He's riveting, even when he's not "doing" anything. He radiates Dillinger's ferocious drive, captures the fierce, smouldering intensity of a man determined to have what he wants right now, letting no man and no system stand in his way.
That quality of Dillinger's, along with his rakish charm, made him a kind of hero to many during the Depression. It's not hard to understand how people faced with an apparently never-ending grind of economic hardship, told that they must wait for better times that seemed unlikely to ever come, could become fascinated by a man who just reached out and took what he was after with a Tommy gun and a crooked grin.
Mann's 1930s midwest feels real and lived in. His legendary attention to the most minute details - from clothing to cars to firearms - pays off in a sense of authenticity that lends weight to what could otherwise just feel like a shoot-em-up.
Sam Peckinpah made art out of tales of bad, mean men doing bad, mean things for reasons they can't or won't explain. Michael Mann just blew the safe where that Peckinpah vision has been stashed for the past quarter-century and made off with the loot.
A tip of the fedora to him.
Yeah,, go see "Public Enemies." Why not?
Jim Cornelius, Editor
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