Public Enemies: A Review

I was bitterly disappointed by Terminator Salvation because I -admittedly unfairly - associate Christian Bale with emotionally complex characters and thematically rich films; indeed his filmography has been littered with those roles from his adolescent turn in Empire of the Sun to last year's The Dark Knight. And despite Heath Ledger's perfect performance in that film, Bale as Batman drew upon his remarkable ability to portray existential angst, which was essential to the tension of the plot. Here again, that existential angst is on display in (and key to) Michael Mann's excellent period crime drama Public Enemies.

In fact, beyond Bale's appearance in Michael Mann's Public Enemies, The Dark Knight is an interesting point of comparison. That movie, was I believe, most aptly described by David Denby of The New Yorker, as in a state of "constant climax". Public Enemies deals with the theme of escalation as well, though less stridently. It also features some of the freshest bank robberies on camera since The Dark Knight's opening scenes, and is as richly layered and stylized as that film. There are shots so beautiful you could frame the stills and hang them in your living room. Public Enemies is rich in the use of among other techniques, visual metaphor: from the locomotive that both conveys and presages the appearance of powerful Texas lawmen to a shot of a copy of True Detective seconds before Dillinger's arrest, to the screening of Clark Gable's Manhattan Melodrama before the film's climax. The slow dissolves to black-and-white and sepia tones lend a verisimilitude to the piece that the more notable actors, if they were any less skilled, might betray.

But of course, you have the aforementioned Bale playing the stalwart and grim Melvin Purvis charged by a simmering J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup), with bringing down John Dillinger, played by a seethingly reserved Johnny Depp. Depp's Dillinger is prepared to explode with passion, whether with joy or anger at every turn, but he is reserved, always aware of the short-term dangers of letting his guard down. This is a film filled with emotionally constrained men (Bale, Depp, and Crudup) and emotionally unrestrained women (the excellent Marion Cotillard as Dillinger's girlfriend "Billie" Frechette and Branka Katic as Anna Sage, a lover), all struggling with the internal and external forces that assail them.

The trailers may have tricked you into believing this is all action, rather than a character study; Depp's reserve may lead you to believe there is too little character in the script. It is the kind of movie that might turn a casual film viewer off, because beyond some well-placed witty dialogue, the movie is equal parts action and abstraction. The dialogue, action, cinematography, lighting, object placement (and absence), all comment first and foremost on the characters of Dillinger and Purvis, and secondary themes, such as notions of masculinity, the nature of honor and criminality as they both apply to crooks and lawmen, and the dichotomy of image versus reality. This last imbues the film with some of its nicest flourishes, such as Hoover's awarding of medals to the Junior G-Men, and Dillinger's notorious interactions with the press. These two, strikingly, are actually quite similar in fact: both are concerned with reality only when it intrudes upon the image. Purvis, by contrast, is only concerned with reality, which, could be interpreted, according to the film's postscript and several key scenes throughout the film as a form of personal hell.

Few movies released since the last Academy Award season have been this meaty, thematically or performance-wise. It is a definite must-see, and is, at least for now, the most finely crafted film of 2009.

Sources

David Denby, Past Shock, The New Yorker