Public Enemies

No one should doubt Michael Mann’s ability as a storyteller. However Public Enemies as a stand-alone piece of cinema is lacking. It saddens me to write this, as Mann is a director I deeply admire, but I felt like he didn’t really work as hard on this film as he could have done.

Johnny Depp should excel in this kind of role. Daringly this representation of a crook is of a dangerous and brave one; Depp is so charismatic that this nasty edge is genuinely very frightening and would lend a complexity to the character. Sadly this is where the depth stops and Dillinger’s only development is to proclaim to future-girlfriend, Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard) he likes fast cars, whiskey, baseball, movies and you. It’s a nice moment and we get the relationship on the back of it; but really not enough depth went into making Dillinger someone we can truly believe in. There’s just not enough going on for the character in this film. His love of bank robbing is never explored nor any angle really taken on it at all. I was very disappointed to see Johnny Depp so blandly handled.

Both Christian Bale and Marion Cotillard suffer the opposite fate. Both their characters are excellently constructed and yet they never really get much screen time despite both delivering fantastic performances. In addition Stephen Lang and Billy Crudup who have even smaller parts are also superb and steal all the scenes either appear in.

It seemed like the film on paper and the one on screen are really two separate entities. On paper ,the pace would have been faster and more orientated around Dillinger. Yet Mann in his expansive fashion takes a look at everyone and moves the action all over the place. It seems a very strange series of complaints – that the lead is too good an actor for the part and the supports are not on screen enough; but it hurts the film severely.

The major flaw in this film, one I thought I might be alone in disliking, was the choice of shoot with a Sony F23 digital camera. Basically shooting on digital rather than onto traditional stock visually compromises this film. Digital film does not have the latitude that film stock provides in low light conditions – especially in moving shots. With this kind of classic story a classic approach would have suited much better.

Mann is a pioneer of this technology and put it to exceptionally good use in his last two films – Collateral and Miami Vice. There the digital “noise” fitted in well with the dirty urban environments. But it’s so incorrect an aesthetic for Public Enemies that the screen appears out of focus. There are some wonderful moments that are blurry to the point where the viewer cannot focus on the image. This is my one largest complaint and reason I would say: see something else. To pay for a ticket and be unable to actually view the film is unreasonable. For FACT and the studios it represents to claim pirate products are poor imitations of the real thing is absolutely right. Yet if high end films continue to be made with a technology that is not yet ready to be capture action in this way then, in my opinion there is no difference between the quality of a pirated DVD and a studio film.

There are moments of brilliance in Public Enemies. The opening is fast and sucked me straight in, the performances are all good and the filmmaking is mostly very fitting. It’s such a shame that the entire production is ruined by a decision to film on a camera that looks so terrible when projected.

By D.F.I