The FTT Movie Review: Public Enemies

Saw this tonight with the Five Tool Ninja as part of our occasional Man Movie Madness. It's a period piece starring Johnny Depp and Christian Bale, where Depp plays Depression-era mobster John Dillinger, and Bale plays the FBI agent who's on his trail.

Every gangster movie, on some level, glorifies the gangster, but director Michael Mann seems hell-bent on trying not to... despite making Dillinger clearly the hero in this piece, albeit a flawed one. Depp is good as always, and he's got some chemistry with girlfriend/moll Marion Cotillard, and a few exceptional set pieces, most involving the ballet-like moves of the mobsters as they rob banks or spring people from prisons.

But the dialogue is a little lacking -- Depp has a few good lines, but not many -- and at the end of it all, you really do wonder what the point was, on some level. I know more about Dillinger now, but I still don't have a ton of insight into what made Melvin Purvis (Bale) tick, or if the Chicago mafia really gave Dillinger up, or if it was more the FBI doing solo work. There's also a sub-plot involving torture that seemed more topical than necessary, though who knows, maybe it was all historically accurate.

The movie is also notable for the presence of a couple of "Wire" character actors. There are worse ideas than getting work in a mob movie, really: you'll always make a few bucks in film.

All in all, a solid movie, especially if you like action with some brains, and Mann really is a good director. But I can't help but think that there was a great movie trapped inside this good one.