DESPITE the three star rating, Public Enemies is by no means a failure. It's just a movie that fails to fill its 140-minute boots. For all the talk in this movie of living for the day and going out in style, the story of America's Gangster No 1 unfol
ds for the first hour with all the urgency of molasses off a spoon. And for a violent film Public Enemies is a resolutely bloodless affair, exposing Michael Mann's weaknesses for atmosphere instead of plot, gesture in place of character, score over dialogue.
Mann allows plenty of time to present his theory that by 1934 America had two threats to law and order. One is John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), the charismatic bank robber dubbed Public Enemy No 1. The other is J Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup), busily putting together the as-yet-not-federal Bureau of Investigation. But while Hoover is buffoonish and pedantic, Mann clearly admires Dillinger. Hell, everyone does in this film. After he hides out in her home, the farmer's wife begs him to take her with him. Depp's allure makes her request easy to identify with. Unstoppable, untouchable and unbelievably charismatic, when he chats up Marion Cotillard's hatcheck girl, he tells her: "I like baseball, movies, good clothes, fast cars, and you. What else you need to know?" By the next scene she's grabbed her coat.
What elevated Dillinger above the ranks of ordinary gangsters was his flamboyance but also his careful cultivation of a Robin Hood brand of popularity, stealing from the banks but leaving ordinary people's accounts untouched so they cheer him on. This, after all, was the lowest point of the Depression, a time when millions of people were incensed by the banks and moneyed interests they felt had robbed them of their jobs and homes.
For the second time this summer Christian Bale pops up but instead of bringing down robot overlords, he's now the FBI's most resourceful agent, Melvin Purvis, who has the job of bringing down Dillinger. It's a terse, focused performance but so dull that you are relieved when he disappears from the film for long stretches. Perhaps he's saving up his emotional outbursts for YouTube.
The other characters fade into the background, victims of clumsy storytelling, or perhaps editing. Channing Tatum makes a handsome Pretty Boy Floyd but disappears rather quickly, Leelee Sobieski pops up in the final quarter as a Dillinger girlfriend with no setup, and by the time you recognise Stephen Dorff or Giovanni Ribisi they've vanished.
Yet Mann is capable of generating some dynamic moments, not least the scene where Dillinger wanders into the Chicago Police Department and scans the piles of evidence and posters of himself. "What's the score?" he asks the cops, who are gathered around a radio listening to a baseball game. But he already knows.
On general release