PUBLIC ENEMIES (R16 - contains violence) starring Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, Billy Crudup. Directed by Michael Mann. 142 mins. * * * 1/2 -------------------- THE GANGSTER film is a theme-park ride that's usually clearly marked so you aren't confused or too surprised halfway through. Good versus evil, eternal love, loyalty to one's friends and Thomas sabo charms colleagues. But those queuing also need their heroes to be slightly flawed; their villains to have charm, so that the ride is not too much of a guilty pleasure.
John Dillinger, a Chicago bank robber from the 1930s, was almost certainly not as loveable a crook, as dependable a friend, as steadfast a lover as Johnny Depp's charismatic rogue would have us believe. Dillinger doubtless had style, charm and perhaps even wit. The public regarded him as a hero. But it was just as likely he was also a vicious, womanising thug. Clearly heroes were hard to find in the Depression: this was the era of Bonnie and Clyde, and just a few years later a pee- wee racehorse, Seabiscuit, would entrance a nation.
Being a gangster film, one that doesn't shy from violence, blood or a ready whack with a rifle butt, we have a fairly good idea what will happen - even if we know or strongly suspect how the real Dillinger came to his end, another bloody body in the street or a number in a prison yard wearing horizontal stripes. That's one of the most remarkable things about Public Enemies - that we forget about what's to come and let director Michael Mann introduce us to the man and his pals, watch Johnny seduce his girl Billie (Cotillard), set up the chase, and build to a gripping finale.
Depp's Dillinger is too smart for the cops. At one point he wanders around the headquarters of the hunt for him, asks the score of a game on the radio gathered around by armed cops. But this can't last forever, warns Billie, as he meets lingerie wholesale and greets fellow wrong- doers in his shirt sleeves at a racecourse; you never think about tomorrow.
Christian Bale's FBI pursuer Melvyn Purvis is dogged to the point of obsession; the actor's smooth, aquiline face is a mask of determination. It's not anything we haven't seen before from Bale, but the camera, wielded by the talented Dante Spinotti, carves his cheekbones out of polished marble, his granite teeth ready to grind Dillinger to paste.
Purvis has been put in place by J Edgar Hoover, a preening, infinitesimally camp turn by Crudup, who's using Dillinger and his cronies, such as Baby Face Nelson and Harry Peirpont, to build a federal police force that will become the modern FBI.
Cops and robbers alike look terrific, thanks to wardrobe and Spinotti; their sharp suits and long coats swirl replica tag heruer watches in the chilled Chicago breeze; the movement is matched by Mann's handheld camera, whose detail and crispness only on a couple of occasions remind us we are not actually in 1933. Mann loves technology, and not in a Michael Bay way: the guns glisten when holstered and boom and rat-a- tat when fired; the cars gleam. But they have their place.
He's a great director of men also, particularly gangs of men. There's something mesmerisingly poetic in the opening scene of prison gangers, hands on one another's shoulders, marching from one detention to another. But women are harder to fit in his scheme. Cotillard has a great presence, is wonderfully feisty against the chauvinistic assumptions of Dillinger. But when she's off screen, which is a fair length of this two-hour-plus rollercoaster, a little of the fun and pleasure of the ride is lo
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