Johnny Depp: 'Public Enemies'
Is Depp convincing as 1930s bank robber John Dillinger in Michael Mann's new film?
Johnny Depp as John Dillinger
(Universal Pictures)
"Public Enemies provides a welcome shock to the system," said Michael Sragow in The Baltimore Sun. Michael Mann's "visually electric movie about Great Depression bank robber John Dillinger," starring Johnny Depp, "takes audiences into the center of the action in its opening minutes" and keeps them there for the entire movie. And Depp "nails this character," giving a "performance equally alert and emotional." (watch the trailer for Public Enemies)
Michael Mann's direction "is often breathtakingly fast," said David Denby in The New Yorker, "but it's always lucid." And "there's almost an unspoken compact between director and audience in a movie like this, a compact of pleasure in everything looking so good." But Public Enemies is "missing" something—"a sense of urgency and discovery, a more complicated narrative path, a shrewder, tougher sense of who John Dillinger is."
It seems that "so many details" were "used on the production design that none were left over for the story," said Matt Pais in Metromix Chicago. "The script just isn't there," and as a result we never get a clear understanding of "Dillinger's background and supposed popularity." In fact, everything about Public Enemies "feels underwritten, strangely edited and poorly explained."
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Posted by Michael J. Gorman, Saturday, July 4, 2009, 9:23 am There's an old interview with a robbery victim of very young John Dillinger in his early teens who regrets ever pressing charges against Dillinger. The victim of a wallet snatch coming out of church said that his complaint led to a ten year stretch for the teenage Dillinger, and put him in the can with hardened criminals. In retrospect, the victim who was interviewed in his late 80's, said he would have let the kid go. Dillinger himself is only interesting because of his daring. It's what went on around him at the time that is interesting
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