A mirror to crime: Public Enemies
PHOTO: AP
ENJOYABLE: Public Enemies.
Public Enemies
Genre: Drama
Cast: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, Billy Crudup, Stephen Dorff, Giovanni Ribisi
Director: Michael Mann
Storyline: In Depression-era America, amid the rising wave of organised crime and an increasingly-organised FBI, John Dillinger’s is one of the last, doomed, romantic gangster stories.
Bottomline: Higher in form than substance but a satisfying watch all the same.
“Die like you live: all of a sudden,” says Clark Gable in ‘Manhattan Melodrama,’ a movie within the movie, ‘Public Enemies,’ directed by Michael Mann. In the latter film, an appreciative member of the audience watching Gable’s bravado, on a warm July night in 1934 at Chicago’s Biograph Theatre, is the notorious bank robber John Dillinger (Johnny Depp). Dillinger’s connection with this existentialist philosophy of living is instant, absolute.
Mann is a director who absolutely understands the dramatic potential of cinema and how to tell a good story, stylishly. A recurring theme in Mann’s films is how good and bad are but two sides of the same coin, as memorably played out by Al Pacino and Robert de Niro in ‘Heat.’ In ‘…Enemies,’ Mann cleverly parallels the rising tide of organised crime in Depression-era America with the increasingly ordered structure being brought to the FBI. Billy Crudup is sharply effective as the young, thuggish J. Edgar Hoover who declares Dillinger to be “Public Enemy Number One”.Depp, always an interesting screen presence, plays Dillinger with restrained power, a half smile and taut one-liners. And, an awareness that his life as the gun-toting bank robber who captured public imagination was going to be as intense as it was brief; he was just 31 when he died. Depp’s Dillinger operates with little caution, whether it’s sweeping into banks without masks and with intent to rob, or into a romance with hatcheck girl Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard). When the luminous Cotillard, afraid but attracted, asks, “What do you want?” he replies, “Everything, right now”.
The good guy
Every gangster drama needs a good guy to track down the bad ones. Here, it is Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), the G-Man whose life purpose becomes the capture of Dillinger. But in a sense, more than these charismatic leads, the movie’s vibe is defined by cinematographer Dante Spinotti opting to shoot in high-definition digital rather than film. The film’s script was adapted from a book by Bryan Burrough. Here, it’s all crafted elegance, from the fedoras to the tailored suits, the gleaming cars and the meticulous coiffures, to the haunting lyrics of ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’ as a musical motif. ‘…Enemies’ has all the trappings of a good film, yet doesn’t hit the spot of all-time greats, largely due to the triumph of form over substance: we enjoy but don’t get into the heads of Dillinger or Purvis. As a result, we don’t quite care enough about their destinies. This is not to detract from all that the film and its director get right. Mann, he’s so good; and when the competition in town is the likes of Michael Bay and ‘Transformers,’ Mann, he’s positively great.
PARVATHI NAYAR
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