- Location: Regal Bowie Stadium 14
- I like baseball, movies, good clothes, fast cars, whiskey, and you. What else you need to know?
- That's how John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) describes his interests to his sweetheart, Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard), but it also seems to reflect director Michael Mann's feelings about the characters in Public Enemies. What you see is what you get. There are no deep reasons offered to explain why these people became cops or crooks, and the film never asks its characters to step beyond the business of their daily lives. Of course, the daily life of John Dillinger can be quite exciting.
- When we first meet Dillinger, he's being escorted into a prison. A few minutes later, he's back out, along with several of his confederates. Breakouts, stick-ups, and shootouts are the order of the day, and it isn't long before the newly-christened Federal Bureau of Investigation, headed by the appropriately thick-necked J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup), takes notice. Hoover is one of the more entertaining characters in the film, preferring to deal with Walter Winchell and cameras than congressional funding committees. As Dillinger takes a night off to woo Miss Frechette, Hoover puts Agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) on the case, quickly shoving him into what we assume is his first press conference. The unassuming Purvis made a name for himself as the man who shot Pretty Boy Floyd (Channing Tatum, in a cameo), but now he'll have to prove himself against the nation's first Public Enemy Number One.
- To recount the exact sequence of events in Public Enemies would be to miss the point of the film, I think. Like its bank-robbing anti-hero, the film lives entirely in the moment, and the engaging digital cinematography conveys a level of realism far beyond that of the usual gangster picture. A completely convincing set of bank robberies and shootouts further supports this impression, with Michael Mann's notoriously meticulous direction resulting in several of the best action sequences of his career. That said, Johnny Depp's brilliant characterization of Dillinger may eclipse all of the film's other achievements. Sometimes Dillinger is a cold-hearted killer, asking Agent Purvis how it feels to watch an agent die. At other times he's a clown, singing in a getaway car or delivering witty sound bytes to a hungry press. At all times, he's a man in love with Billie Frechette, and at all times he's completely believable.
- Although the film contains many great scenes, several of my favorite involve the supposedly notorious Dillinger trying to remain unrecognized. When you're a Public Enemy, seemingly innocuous activities like waiting out stop lights or sitting in movie theaters carry with them a certain danger. Interestingly, Dillinger does very little to mitigate such risks, even going so far as to drop in on one of the Chicago "Dillinger Squads" to see who's looking for him. It's the sort of chance that the new generation of mobsters, represented by Frank Nitti (Bill Camp) and his associates, would never take, preferring to rake in a constant stream of money without having to knock over a bank to do it. Although Dillinger's audacity gets him pretty far in life, it's ultimately not enough to keep him from getting recognized on one particularly consequential night outside the Biograph Theater. After several fast-paced shootouts and robberies, the film wisely takes its time with the finale, letting us watch Manhattan Melodrama along with Dillinger right up to the very end.
- I realize that my review may have made it sound like Public Enemies is about only one person. While Dillinger is certainly the focus of the film, he is surrounded by a compelling cast of characters, too. Marion Cotillard is excellent as Frechette, as is Branka Katic as Anna Sage, the woman who gives Dillinger up. Some of Dillinger's fellow enemies, like the appropriately creepy Alvin Karpis (Giovanni Ribisi) and the violently volatile "Baby Face" Nelson (Stephen Graham), are quite memorable. Others, like Homer Van Meter (Stephen Dorff), "Red" Hamilton (Jason Clarke), and Harry Pierpont (David Wenham) have good, but limited, roles as Dillinger's associates. On the side of the law, Christian Bale gives a wonderfully muted performance as the resolute Purvis, and he is supported well by a completely unrecognizable Stephen Lang as Texas Ranger Charles Winstead. It's only in writing this out that I realize just how huge this cast really was, but then I guess that's what these larger-than-life characters required.
- The line about "I'm here for the bank's money..." was used in Heat, but is reportedly a Dillinger original.
- Several elements of the actual chronology have been tinkered with, but they're probably not worth listing.
- In addition to Manhattan Melodrama, Baby-Face Nelson does a James Cagney impression at one point.
