Public Enemies2009

Сomments

• Anonymous, 6 months ago

  

  They tried to make a classic. But, they JUST tried. There's something artificial and far-fetched about this movie... It's also unnecessarily long.

• Anonymous, 6 months ago

  

  I'm a huge fan of Johnny Depp who isn't? He is an amazing actor. This movie however wasn't as good as I hoped it to be. Johnny Depp brought the movie to life but without him in it this movie would have not been worth the watch. The story drug along moved to slow at points and should have been shorter it was too long, found myself asking is it really still going? Overall Johnny Depp made this movie what it was and witout him nope wouldn't have cared for it.

• Anonymous, 6 months ago

  

  PUBLIC ENEMIES - "Locked & loaded but misses the target"
  If you loved the preview for Public Enemies, then you won't be disappointed, as it fundamentally a two and a half hour preview.
  
  The movie is essentially a brief biopic of John Dillinger, famous outlaw of the depression era, and the cop who pursued him, Melvin Purvis. This is the information you go into the theatre with and that's about all you leave with. The movie stumbles from scene to scene, with no coherent connection between events and characters, I was constantly left wondering who people were and why something had just happened.
  
  Despite the above criticism, Public Enemies is not a bad movie/preview and it ticks all the boxes needed to make a great movie/preview ; A-List actors -- CHECK, Big Budget -- CHECK, Accomplished Director -- CHECK, Famous Historical Figure -- CHECK, Love Story -- CHECK, Big Action Scenes -- CHECK, Batman & Willy Wonka II -- CHECK.... The list goes on and it is an entertaining, if unsatisfying viewing experience.
  
  So why wasn't this movie awesome, well if you know nothing about any of the characters it is unlikely you will care what happens to them. Amidst all the jail breaks, bank robberies, and strangely edited love scenes it seems as though there is no time for character development, a few quips from Depp and screams from Bale is about all you get to flesh out the characters. Was the audience supposed to automatically relate to the characters based on the actors resume? I would liken Dillinger to a combination of Don Juan & Donnie Brasco, where Purvis was basically a deep southern version of Batman minus cape & Batmobile. I'd love to mention other characters but they were to unmemorable, pretty boy something?...
  
  On the Fruit-Meter, Public Enemies get the "WATERMELON" - Big, Bold, and Flashy, goes down smooth, but once you've finished eating you realise there wasn't much substance to it.
  
  MART-FLIX PUN-FUN - Tommy-guns and big action can't "bale" out movie which suffers from lack of "deppth"...terrible

• Anonymous, 6 months ago

  

  This is my 117th review. And it's gangster time, so time to Mann up! I apoligize for that horrible play on words.
  
  Michael Mann made one of the best crime movies I've ever seen. It's called "Heat", and I'm gonna assume you've seen it. If not, stop reading this, and BUY it. That was reason enough for me to see "Public Enemies", the 2009 crime film about gangster John Dillinger. But, when I heard it was going to have Johnny Depp AND Christian Bale, I had to rush to it. How did it turn out? Well, it could've been better, but overall, what we have is a fun slick summer action flick.
  
  It follows John Dillinger, popular gangster of the people, being tracked down by FBI agent Melvin Purvis, also Dillingers cronies, who tag along with the unorthodox criminal. Meanwhile, Dillinger also takes a liking to a certian chica, named Billie Frechette. And the rest chronicles his ducking out from the FBI, and trying to get it on with his lady, Billie. It's mostly just the last days of Dillinger, but it entertains.
  
  Johhny Depp plays Dillinger, and does pretty good. Even great. However, this dosen't rank as one of Depp's best roles. But when you're talking about the greatest actor ever (besides Bruce Campbell), that's forgivable. Christian Bale plays Purivs, a badass agent, who's gonna take down Dillinger. And Bale does it really smoothe. Marion Cotillard plays Billie, and does really solid. I have nothing to compare her to, since this is the first movie I've seen with her. Billy Crudup plays J. Edger Hoover, and disappointley, disappears in the latter half of the film. Because he does great! Stephen Lang plays another FBI agent, who's name I forget, and does a solid role.
  
  The music dosen't leave much of an impact, although that's hardly a hot button topic. Rather, it was filmed with a HD camera, rather than a 35 mm camera. I hope that's not the way of the future, but the look is an interesting one, that sometimes suffers from a slowed down framerate. But at it's best, it has great detail. The action scenes are excellent, with great angles, no jumpy camera, and more tommy gun action then I've seen in a while.
  
  Overall, "Public Enemies" dosen't do anything to evolve the genre, and feels sometimes a little half-ass. I find myself disliking it more and more as I think about it, but the movie has some really great action scenes, solid performances, and is entertaing. I say, watch it. 7/10.

• Anonymous, 6 months ago

  

  From director Michael Mann comes the film inspired by on of the country's most captivating and infamous outlaws of the 1930's, John Dillinger. This is like no other American gangster film, Johnny Depp is amazing and portrays the worlds most famous bank robber John Dillinger really well. A well-acted and fast paced thrill ride. The screenplay lacks interesting structure but other than that a wild ride of a movie.

• Anonymous, 6 months ago

  

  Excesively boring. The screenplay lacks any interesting structure.

• Anonymous, 6 months ago

  

  As ever Johnny Depp is amazing and really portrays him well. Not usually my type of movie, but i really ennjoyed this, sometimes i found it hard to keep track of the minor characters due to some of them being very similar, especially in the chase through the woods. Definitely a must see.

• Anonymous, 6 months ago

  

  A well-acted, face-paced ride. Better than most recent gangster movies. Good movie and rewatchable.

• Anonymous, 6 months ago

  

  2009 was a year in which bad directors over-earned and good directors underperformed. Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus was much-hyped after the death of Heath Ledger, but turned out to be an uninvolving, incoherent mess. Robert Zemeckis' A Christmas Carol was too cold and too scary for children, despite improvements in the motion capture technology. And then we have Public Enemies, which sees Michael Mann coming seriously unstuck, producing what could be the least involving film of his career.
  
  In all three cases, the directors have developed a fascination with technology which has somehow overwhelmed their knack for storytelling and drama. Whether it's Gilliam's new-found love of CGI, or Zemeckis' continued love affair with motion capture, their technical and visual prestige has become distracting and annoying. Mann's love of high-definition and hand-held photography worked wonders with Collateral, because the glossy look of the film befitted its ultra-modern setting. But that is not the case with Public Enemies, which can only be described as a triumph of style over substance.
  
  The first serious problem with Public Enemies is that the shooting style is completely at odds with the nostalgic tone of the film. John Dillinger is presented as a perversion of the American hero, someone who is cheered even as he is being driven to jail. He is, in a way, a 1930s Henry Hill, a young and ambitious personality who brings warmth and glamour to the world of gangsters. And the idea that Mann pursues is very much the same one that Martin Scorsese did -- we are expected to warm to the characters so that when all hell breaks lose there is no escape from the horror.
  
  Unfortunately, Mann's decision to shoot the whole film on hand-held cameras takes away the stately, hubristic feeling which made Goodfellas so frightening. His use of close-ups and high-definition are great in bringing out the colours or the subtle changes in the actors' faces, but eventually you become annoyed by all the wobbly angles which end up undercutting a lot of the tension in key scenes. And that's not to mention the unfortunate blur we get when the camera quickly pans round. During the shoot-outs we feel deeply confused as to what is going on; we certainly don't feel immersed in the action, as we would if Paul Greengrass were directing.
  
  This incoherency and series of annoying visual tics means that we as an audience feel very distant from the story and spectacle we are being presented. The film is incredibly glacial; every time we try to engage with what it is doing, it suddenly cuts rapidly to another scene, as if it doesn't want our attention. In certain places Public Enemies is actually quite boring, either because you've given up trying to engage or because the direction is too incoherent to make things out.
  
  The shoot-out scenes are a classic example of this. Aside from the aforementioned glitches in the camerawork, there are simply too many of them. In Heat Mann was able to keep the lid on any physical conflict for the best part of two hours, so that when the climactic gun battle came, it actually felt like a climax. Here, there's a raid or a battle every half an hour, and the editing is so flashy that you find yourself wanting to rewind the film by a few seconds just to make sure that Dillinger is still alive.
  
  Considering Mann's back catalogue, and the pedigree of the two leads, you would have thought that the film would be able to make up for its superficiality by anchoring itself around two solid characters. Both Johnny Depp and Christian Bale are talented actors, but they seem deeply unsure of themselves in these roles. Their performances are decent, insofar as their accents don't slip and their personalities aren't dependent on how many guns they're carrying. But the more close-ups we have of their faces, the less we think they want to be in this film (in Depp's case this is true, since he and Mann feel out on the set). Most worryingly, there seems to be little genuine tension between the characters, a realisation which almost scuppers the film.
  
  If you compare this to The Untouchables, Brian De Palma's drama about Elliot Ness' battle to bring down Al Capone, you realise just how important distant tension is in creating drama. For everything that's wrong with The Untouchables -- including Sean Connery's preposterous Oscar nod -- De Palma manages to create the sense of claustrophobia between the hero and the villain which Public Enemies so desperately needs. Ness and Capone don't meet until the very end of the film, but the war-by-proxy of personalities and ideals really sticks in your mind, allowing you to go with the characters and put up with most of the twists.
  
  Public Enemies has none of this tension, at least not of the level we expect from either the director or two such intense performers. The one scene of Depp and Bale together, with Depp behind bars waiting to be transferred to Indiana, feels rather limp and ill-conceived. The dialogue has none of the incisive sparring of the coffee shop scene in Heat or Tom Cruise's big speech in Collateral. The main reason for this may be that these two characters are at odds with Mann's central thesis of good and evil being two sides of the same coin. There is little to no effort made to set this up, since the characters have few common traits or goals, save for their violent instincts and merciful attitude to women.
  
  The film does have a couple of saving graces. Marion Cotillard is genuinely magnetic as Dillinger's girlfriend. There seems to be so much going on with her character even when she is saying or doing nothing. Although she is absent for a lot of the film and hence the drama is somewhat undercut, in her scenes with Depp, we understand what he risks losing and in those moments we invest emotionally in their relationship. There is also a promising performance from Steven Graham, who plays Baby Face Nelson as a trigger-happy hybrid of Sonny Corleone and Tony Montana. His death scene at the hands of Melvin Purvis is suitably dramatic, and he manages to lift every scene he's in.
  
  Overall, though, Public Enemies is up there with Doctor Parnassus as one of the year's biggest disappointments. It's marginally better than Parnassus, if only because your main emotion while watching it is disappointment rather than annoyance. But it fails on almost any other level. When held up against The Untouchables or the superior Road to Perdition, it doesn't take a genius to see that it is the runt of the litter. Mann is a great filmmaker, and there are individual moments where his intelligence and genius shine through. But for all these moments, Public Enemies is less than the sum of its parts, and makes for ultimately grim viewing.

• Anonymous, 6 months ago

  

  This is a fairly disappointing movie that could have been a whole lot better. It looks and should be awesome; it has a dream cast with some of the three best performers today, it has a director that has proven himself in this kind of matierial, and its a story about one of the most nororious gangsters ever.. But in the end the movie failed to spark any emotions, was ocasionaly boring, and overall only faintly entertaining. What the heck happend?!
  
  First off I would like to say that this movie suffers from an extreme lack of good dialouge. I really wish they had focused less on the action and more on the character development. I would have liked to see them gang plan their robberies or enjoy the money they've made instead of only the robbery. Also Christain Bale doesn't have enough sceen time.
  
  Second off; there are way too many shootout. The main flaw of this movie is that it is too long for the characters to be shooting at each other this much.
  
  Overall this movie only manages to be entertaining in small parts, but in the end you find yourself waiting for it to end.