Public Enemies offers us a look into the Golden Age of Bank Robbers. Johnny Depp plays another charming bad guy, the Hoosier state's most notorious son John Dillenger. Pitted against Dillenger is Christian Bale as Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Batman ... umm Purvis. The Bureau was initially supposed to be made up of the best and the brightest using the most modern investigative methods to bring criminals to justice.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work out so well. Purvis is no Elliot Ness. Indeed, in the movie, most of his recruits are decidedly not up to the challenge of taking down the likes of Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson and John Dillenger. The film shows us that sometimes the only thing that separates the criminals from the police is little more than a thin bit of metal. And the federal law enforcers seem more into the hunt for prey than in bringing wanted and dangerous criminals to justice.
One could read into this movie parallels to the current state of the Global War on Terror and the current economic crisis. The methods the law enforcement agents use are at turns degrading and terrorizing. A woman who has to use the rest room during an interrogation is left chained to her chair. A man with a bullet in the back of his head is left to endure the pain until he gives up some vital intel. It's a period piece in which the banks were seen as the bad guys and bank robbers were glorified as folk heros.
Public Enemies is a period piece. Indeed, has many pieces it tries to bring into a cohesive whole but the final puzzle picture remains as grainy as some of its cinematograpy. It has pacing problems. The movie is often confusing about where the action is happening. Bale gives another performance that seems like every other performance. This is another movie in which the color is bleached out. The night scenes are grainy. It may all be an attempt to create a unified visual documentary feel. If so, it fails not because of the effort but because the movie lacks epic scope.
The movie wants to provide us with "just the facts" which themselves are compelling, but alone aren't compelling enough. It wants to be unsentimental about its subject matter: a likeable folk hero bank robber vs. an earnest law enforcement agent who has to make moral compromises to get Public Enemy No. 1. This is epic material.
In the final scene, Dillenger is in the cinema watching the Clark Gable film "Manhattan Melodrama." We get the sense that Dillenger saw himself in Clark Gable terms. Public Enemies wants to be seen as more than a just another gangster film. The creative team could have learned a lesson or two from The Godfather.
