Public Enemies

Public Enemies is not about the seminal rap group. I only mention this because I went in under that misapprehension, and was a little discombobulated when instead of seeing Chuck D, Flava Flav, and Terminator X I got Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, and Billy Crudrup. Now you would say that these are essentially the same people and I shouldn't have been able to tell the difference from appearences, and you would be correct. However when Mr. Depp did not immediately start breaking into thoughtful politically motivated rap I realized that I was actually watching a film about the rise and fall of depression era criminal John Dillinger. So not quite what I was expecting but after disposing of the clock hanging around my neck I was able to get over it.

This film has all the elements of a successful movie. Interesting story, good cast (the above three plus Marion Cotillard), and a solid director (Michale Mann), however I left it feeling that it was just alright as opposed to anything groundbreaking. The whole exercise feels fairly mechanical, and it falls prey to the problem, that a lot of films in this genre have, of not being able to have the final confrontation to the very end (I'm not saying the final confrontation should be at the beggining, so I guess the correct thing would be to say that the actual problem is these films aren't completely sure how to get to the final confrontation). As a result it mistakenly has Bale's FBI agent almost catch Depp's Dillinger so many times that eventually the whole exercise began to feel a little rote and when the ultimate confrontation finally occurs its impact has been diliuted. The film is still entertaining and better than most of the other wide releases out concurrently (cough-Angels & Demons, Transformers, Ice Age 3 - cough), just don't expect another goodfellas or godfather.

Postscript: Take this rant for what it is - the ridiculous nitpicking of a socially retarded blogger. A few years ago a buddy of mine the Marines took me to a shooting range and I learned what a difficult activity it actually is. Basically if you don't stand like you're about to have a bowel movement and have both hands on the gun the odds of actually hitting something you're aiming at are miniscule. As a result whenever I watch movies now and see guys running around and firing guns one handed while doing barrell rolls I tend to roll my eyes a little bit (Kind of like when I hear characters give incorrect tax advice - don't you know your influence on the Children? THE CHILDREN?) I only mention this because Public Enemies has a plethora of this kind of gun play. In particular there one scene where Christian Bale is hanging off the side of a car with a tommy gun in one hand and manages to mow down, and this is my conservative estimate, fifty thousand bad guys. Usually this wouldn't bother me but in a film that purports to represent some semblance of reality this really distracted me. Of course I'm also distracted by shiny things on the ground. And the above paragraph does not say that I'm too uptight and need to relax. All people think this way. At least all of the people I know. SHUT UP!