Public Enemies

Pacing and technology issues prevent Public Enemies from being a really great film, but as a depression-era version of Heat it's quite enjoyable and will probably hold up pretty well. I haven't seen a ton of Michael Mann's movies, but I'm always impressed by the quality of the acting and plotting in addition to the unique realism of the gun fights that still manage to be really exciting. This movie has a huge cast and pretty big scope, as it covers not just John Dillinger's life but everything that was going on around him, from the law enforcement ramifications of all the bank robberies to the rise of organized crime. Johnny Depp is good as always, showing he's not just limited to wacky roles these days, and besides the somewhat lame accent Christian Bale plays an interesting and nuanced antagonist. Oscar winner Marion Cotillard brought more to her part than I expected of it, and really helped to humanize Dillinger as more than just a jovial dangerous criminal.

The one thing that kept me from totally liking the movie the most was the slow pace. At about two hours and twenty minutes it wasn't terribly overlong, and very few scenes ever dipped below the pretty high standard of quality Mann set, but I couldn't help feeling it was stretched a little too thin here and there, and the final act just went on for entirely too long before the inevitable conclusion finally occurred. The other issue was the use of digital camera for the vast majority of the shooting. When the camera's standing still, the picture it takes is pretty damn stunning. But if the camera is moving rapidly, which is pretty necessarily the case in a movie full of violent bank robberies, it can get distractingly blurry and inhibit the film. Because of the way it was shot and edited together so well, it doesn't hurt comprehension like it might in the hands of a lesser production team, but it does show that the cameras we have aren't quite up to the task of this sort of movie just yet. All issues considered, I had little problem with what was ever actually happening on screen at any given moment, and mostly liked the film quite a bit.