I Make Movie Review-Public Enemies

"I'm John Dillinger", Johnny Depp mutters in Public Enemies opening minutes. "I rob banks." If you wanna know anymore about Dillinger, the Robin Hood-esque bank robber gunned down by FBI agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) and his crew at age 31, Wiki the guy. Watch the History Channel. Go to the local library. Because "I rob banks" is about the only thing this clunky, repetitive, incoherent let-down of a movie has to say about its lead subject. That's right, Michael Mann, one of the best directors of his time-Heat and The Insider are among the flat-out best movies ever-has finally made a Good Ol' Fashioned Flop-a self-important, bloated mess of a movie that even its formidable stars can't save. Dillinger was a man who fed off the public perception of him as an everyman striking back against the Depression-era finanical system-in short, a legend in his own time. Unfortunately Mann, a director notorious for his attention to factual accuracy, turns out to be the wrong guy for a movie about a semi-mythical figure. Unwilling to fudge reality and show the glamorous, badass Dillinger America saw, he shoots in gritty, grainy HD, sticks to the mundane, well-known facts of Dillinger's life, and leaves Depp without much direction. Depp, normally one of the most inventive and impressive actors alive, makes an honorable attempt to rise above the mess, but Mann gives him little to do except mumble and bore into the camera with his pretty-boy eyes. Also left non-plussed and stuck in underwritten roles are Bale and Marion Cotillard (as Dillinger's beau). Even Bale and Depp's one scene together lacks any semblance of drama. At least Billy Crudup has some flamboyant fun in a bit part as FBI head J. Edgar Hoover. And Mann is still the best action director the movies have ever given us, and the movies two big knock-down-blow-outs-an explosive gunfight in a dark forest and the masterfully Hitchockian murder that ends the film-are it's only two true thrills. Everything in between-all 143 minutes of it-isn't any good. It isn't awful either. It's something worse-disappointing. C-