It was kinda nice to see a movie that wasn't about some cartoon character super hero for a change.Instead, we have Public Enemies, a mostly historical action drama chronicling the creation of the FBI (and J Edgar Hoover) in the effort to capture John Dillinger and other famed bandits of the day.
Other characters like Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson and Frank Nitti come into play, but mostly as window dressing. This story is about Dillinger, after all.
I couldn't help but be reminded of Bonnie And Clyde (1968?). Lots of gunfire, car chases,jail breaks, tommy guns... You get the idea. Classic 'cops & robbers' stuff. But Bonnie And Clyde had character development, where you, the viewer was brought into the scene right along with the heroes(villains?).
Not so with Public Enemies. This was more like seeing the whole thing through a window. The personal connection is never made. Maybe this was by design? Hard to say.
The action was fairly good, the dramatic effects not so much, and Johnny Depp as Dillinger, naturally, played his part well. The whole cast did,really. Any lack of depth in the characters came from the screenplay itself, and not from the hired help.
All in all, suspenseful and exciting. Well worth the money.
2 comments:
Michael Mann seems to like to tell the story in visuals (lighting, framing, color) more so that with, you know, characters and stuff. Fortunately, he's rather good at it...but obviously if everyone tried to do this movies would be horrible.
It was no Heat, but still pretty damn good, I thought. I really liked Depp as Dillinger. (And I would probably watch an industrial safety training video if it had Marion Cotillard in it.)
My biggest disappointment was that they didn't shoot at the actual Hotel Congress in Tucson (a beautiful building in whose tap room I have lost a few evenings.)
cotillard is sexy,aint she? but it seems to be a more subtle, smoldering kind of sexy, something beneath the surface instead of the blatantcy that usually is presented in movies.
Post a Comment