Indiana State Prison in 1933 and bank robber John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) has been taken to be incarcerated there, but what the guards and authorities don't know is he has a plan to spring members of his gang from the establishment. No sooner is he is inside than he has produced a gun and started threatening those guards, and they make a quick getaway, if not an entirely successful one as they are being shot at all the while, and one of their number is fatally wounded. Not Dillinger, mind you, he survives to fight another day as he emerges as America's Public Enemy Number One...
It's safe to say director Michael Mann knows his way around a crime movie, but he wanted to expand his range and hark back to the golden age of the gangster flick when the likes of James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart were staking out territories as the most popular bad guys audiences really loved on the silver screen. To render this as modern feeling as possible, as if viewers of the 21st Century were seeing the events as freshly as those of the thirties would have experienced not only the entertainment of the day but the news stories, Mann employed a shot-on-video, high definition and handheld camera look to his story.
Which might have sounded good on paper, but oddly those modern audiences resisted it, with many complaining the director's innovative style was all wrong for a period piece leading to much grumbling among those who felt Mann was losing it in his advancing years. But in a way he had the right idea, as it wasn't such an egregious notion to create something from the past in the mode of it really happening as you watch, as if those intervening years meant nothing when the people depicted were once as alive and kicking as you watching are now. The biggest problem Public Enemies suffered was its depiction of Dillinger as a heroic figure, and allowing lawman Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) to be outshone.
The point would appear to be Dillinger was a celebrity in The Depression, while the law was not populated with such charismatic personalities though we do see J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) beginning to establish himself. But even with an actor of Bale's magnetism, he was far too overshadowed in a role that he was overqualified for, while Depp was to be applauded for testing his fanbase by playing such a scuzzy character, but still came across as someone we should be supporting. Dillinger was no Robin Hood figure in real life, though the public genuinely did have a fascination with him and the other gangsters we see here, and it's this dichotomy which scuppers the tone of a film which cannot make its mind up how moral or immoral it's meant to be.
Mann had packed his cast with recognisable faces, as if to underline the movie star status of the players in this drama in the eyes of those who studied the newspaper headlines or newsreels of the era, but Depp was a curious choice. Not that he was bad in the role, as he contained the right amount of attraction and capacity for unpleasantness, but you only had to look at what tough guy actors such as Lawrence Tierney or Warren Oates had done with the part previously to appreciate Depp wasn't really that great a fit with Dillinger. And Mann, too, for all his evident enthusiasm for the subject, was having trouble conveying his passion to the audience, as unless you worshipped everything he made, and there were a fair few of those who did, you would find yourself waiting to see what the big deal about this was aside from watching yet another shootout. Only at the end did Mann assert his power, with the editing of the screening of Manahttan Melodrama Dillinger attended masterfully handled. Music by Elliot Goldenthal.
American writer/director whose flashy, dramatic style has made for considerable commerical success on the big and small screen. After writing for television during the late 70s, he made his debut with the thriller Thief. The Keep was a failed horror adaptation, but Mann's TV cop show Miami Vice was a massive international success, while 1986's Manhunter, based on Thomas Harris's Red Dragon, was one of the decade's best thrillers.
Last of the Mohicans was a rip-roaring period adventure, Heat a dynamic if overlong cops 'n' robbers story, and The Insider a gripping real-life conspiracy thriller. 2002's Ali, Mann's much-touted biography of the legendary boxer, was a bit of an anti-climax, but as ever, stylishly rendered. Mann's next film was the thriller Collateral, starring Tom Cruise as a ruthless contract killer, and his big screen updating of Miami Vice divided opinion, as did his vintage gangster recreation Public Enemies. His cyber-thriller Blackhat was a resounding flop.
Fascinating in part because Mann's intimate style allows us to inhabit a 1930s milieu rather than view it through a veil of nostalgia. But I would agree there is a certain distance to the piece that stops it being as emotionally involving as it ought to be. I thought Depp was pretty good actually, but Bale's lawman emerged a curious enigma, through no fault of his own though. Towards the end the focus strangely shifts onto fellow FBI guy Stephen Lang. Not sure why.
Spare a thought for Carey Mulligan. She dyed her hair platinum blonde on Michael Mann's instructions, only to suffer an allergic reaction and lose most of it. To add insult to injury, her part was reduced to a virtual cameo. Poor thing.
Posted by:
Rónán Doyle
Date:
7 Jun 2012
The whole Low-fi Digi-Cam aesthetic that worked so wonderfully for Miami Vice giving the image such three-dimensionality with deep blue skies stretching to eternity and gorgeous high contrast colour, quite frankly looked wretched for “Enemies”. Given the sartorial monotony of depression-era America, a period of austerity styling where dark hues predominated, the “video look” does the film’s production design no favours. A Murky, grainy, TV movie of the week feel, it should have been shot on film. Compare “Enemies” to Millers Crossing or even the more recent Road to Perdition...visually it doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
Given Mann’s penchant for revelling in the grit and dog-eat-dog unsentimentality of the Criminal world it was a total gip to see this lionised Robin Hood-esque Dillinger, a bon-vivant who just so happened to rob the occasional bank . This should have been a hardcore revisionist flick , instead tonally we got a soft-focus, vaseline lensed, romanticised account of a killer that might have been palatable had it been shot (on film!) as an elegiac tribute to the gangster flicks of old. “Enemies” is interesting in that its aesthetics are at total variance to its soul.
Posted by:
Graeme Clark
Date:
7 Jun 2012
Nicely put, Rónán, it just doesn't hit the right tone at all, does it? Mind you, I'm not normally a Michael Mann fan.
Posted by:
Rónán Doyle
Date:
7 Jun 2012
“Heat” is a rightly venerated as a genre milestone. “Thief” is super-stylish. Even the reviled/adored “The Keep” has many merits. For me it’s all about the mood Mann conjours that makes me a fan – sharp suits, imposing cityscapes and assault rifles, the sense of the momentous. “Enemies” I was practically salivating in anticipation of back in the day but was to be sorely disappointed.
As you alluded to it has a severe personality disorder, it just simply doesn’t know what it wants to be. Superficially when it comes to its visual presentation it says one thing but scratch beneath the surface and you’ve got a dispiritingly hollow experience. Johnny Depp in sharp suits toting iconic period weaponry does not a gangster classic make. “Enemies” should have been a raw exploration of sociopathy but what we got was the Disney version of the Dillinger story from the unlikeliest directorial source, Mann. But what really galls me is all that period detail rendered insignificant due to the murk and grot of the final picture. Nice weapon SFX though and big satisfying muzzle flashes. I look forward to Fleischer’s Gangster Squad.
Posted by:
Graeme Clark
Date:
7 Jun 2012
For me, The Insider is Mann's masterpiece, and it's a great shame he didn't apply his knack for true crime with glossy visuals to Public Enemies as well as he had with his Big Tobacco takedown. That said, no matter that I'm not always keen on his work, I'm always interested to see what he does next.
Posted by:
Rónán Doyle
Date:
7 Jun 2012
Agreed re. "The Insider"! I’m a sucker for visual pizzazz and Mann’s oeuvre is supremely stylish, when you have a director who can at times effortlessly straddle the divide between style and substance I’m in cinephile heaven (Big fan of Tarsem’s “The Fall”). I remember seeing Heat on VHS for the first time as a youngster - that post-heist street battle with the sound turned all the way up to 11... chills. Nothing in "Enemies" grabbed me to the same degree, perhaps my expectations were far too high. Hell, now that I think of it even Collateral had that exhilirating nightclub takedown sequence. "Enemies" for me was the definition of "meh".
I 'm digging Chris Nolan’s whole mahogany and marble “business class” aesthetic at the moment, how he alternates between grimy urban squalor and the palatial ala “The Dark Knight” and “Inception”. He’s arguably becoming Mann’s stylistic successor and even, dare I say it, out-Manning Mann! I seriously need to watch The Insider again and re-evaluate...not enough assault rifles for me :P
Posted by:
Graeme Clark
Date:
7 Jun 2012
Yeah, do give The Insider another try, it has all the morality of one of Mann's gangster dramas with a rich, questioning (even accusing) tone, plus I really liked its sinister mood of paranioa reminiscent of those classic 1970s conspiracy thrillers.
Heat I saw on the big screen (and it was a BIG screen!) and remember getting a bit restless until the street battle whereupon I sat up and thought, hey, this is more like it! Terrific sequence, and shows what Mann could do with action. Found the drama a bit ponderous, though Pacino was good value. Rather that than Ali, which was all over the place.
Though more of a fantasist, Nolan has obviously been studying Mann, you're right, but I fear Tarsem's splendid The Fall was a one-off from him.
Posted by:
Rónán Doyle
Date:
8 Jun 2012
As regards Tarsem it appears your sadly correct... Immortals was nothing more than expensive ornamentation, utterly devoid of soul. An artsy "300" featuring Sergei Parajanov inspired headgear! I couldn't bring myself to go his his Snow White flick...
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