PUBLIC ENEMIES

Public Enemies, Michael Mann, Director, 2009   

Have hat will travel!

HOOK: The film for the new depression.

LINE:  “My name is John Dillinger. I rob banks.” 

SINKER: “Where are you going?” “Anywhere I want.”

SPANKY: I know John grew up in Chicago and as a kid went to movies at the Biograph where Dillinger was shot (and even traced the filled bullet holes in the cement), but this film doesn’t add anything to the genre as far as I’m concerned—in fact it skirts over opportunities to do this that Bonnie and Clyde and the Godfather, Part 2, didn’t. On the positive side, it is very tactile: men’s wool pants, the glint of old cars on city streets in the rain at night, fur collars on women’s cloth coats. And the surreal detail of the HD camerawork with the severe close ups create an intensity we don’t get in real life, much less in history. I didn’t buy Dillinger falling for the girl, nor feel I got any new insight into his character. I loved the opening (prison break) sequence and the final collage seen by a brazen Dillinger on the bulletin board of the Chicago Police’s special John Dillinger squad room, is brilliant. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the film is not.

“ONE PAW Up” (2 BARKs out of four)

JOHN: I think this is a terrific film, though I admit a lot depends upon what you bring to it. If you feel, as I do, somewhat disenfranchised and overwhelmed (by trillion dollar health reform, for example) shooting a Tommy gun off in the woods is appealing. (PS I don’t like guns, and never have, but was raised listening to “Gangbusters” on the radio in bed at night with the lights out.) Psychological depth was never at the heart of gangster movies— that’s a later addition from the sixties and seventies—but that glint in Depp’s eye as he watches Clark Gable in Manhattan Melodrama on the screen is the same one we share watching Depp as Dillinger today. Who gives a fuck, we just want to be in the movies. The politicking of J. Edgar Hoover, the ambivalence of straight-guy Christian Bale are enough of a hint why we’re in such a mess today. When the fetching Marion Cotillard tears over the departed gangster at the end, we do to. Not only for him but for ourselves. No, this movie is perfect as it is. If you don’t like it, you’re not bringing your true self to the experience.  

GO GO GO GO (4 GOs out of four)