Total Number of Ratings: 5
Public Enemies Take 2
Saturday, July 4, 2009 2:42 AM
Public Enemies is the latest Michael Mann film starring Johnny Depp as John Dillinger, essentially a folk hero if you will who liked to rob banks during the Great Depression in the 1930's. And Christian Bale plays Melvin Pervis (giggle), the agent in charge of finding him and bringing him to justice.
To start off, Public Enemies looks like no other film out there. Much of the film was shot on the high resolution F23 Sony Cameras. For parts of the film I almost thought it looked like I was watching a documentary. And I actually kind of enjoyed the feel of it. Michael Mann likes to experiment with new cameras and styles which he also used in Collateral which I liked. Bravo to the film maker who is willing to take chances and at least achieve some sort of success with that. Especially during the action scenes, which I thought were filmed really well. However, there was a seesaw effect going on with the action scenes and then the scenes with heavy dialogue. The dialogue would set up for great action scenes, but would initially drag out way too long.
The acting isn't necessarily a problem in the movie, but the character dynamics were. Both Dillinger and Pervis come off as static, stale characters. I'm not a huge fan of Johnny Depp (as in I don't get to watch a lot of his roles), I liked him in this film, but I just don't think he really got a chance to explore his character. With Pervis you start to see some character evolution in the last quarter of the film but it wasn't really enough.
Which may have tied in with how long the movie was. I could have easily seen about twenty minutes shaved off of this film. There was a huge cast with this film, but it was hit or miss depending upon the character.
One of the problems I had with the film is that throughout the film everything is seen in real time, and in the last scene with Dillinger, a slow motion effect is put in place, now I understand the set up for the shot, but it was almost a bit of a turnoff with the style and pacing of the movie.
The soundtrack for Public Enemies was something I heavily enjoyed. The song Ten Million Slaves by Otis Taylor was a brilliant piece to use during the bank robbery scenes, and I almost felt it underused at first, but was overall pleased. I've never heard banjo and guitar fused together like that before. Public Enemies did a great job capturing the essence of the 1930's with the soundtrack.
The story, though not entirely historically accurate, was probably the 3rd thing I liked about this movie even though. I didn't like the entire story spanning, but a lot of parts I enjoyed here and there.
Overall Public Enemies was enjoyable, but nothing above that. The soundtrack was a huge plus and I'm actually going to go buy it. The acting didn't really do anything for me except make me do J. Edgar Hoover (thanks Billy) impressions for a half hour at the Steak&Shake afterwords. My waiter thought we were all drunk. So far for the summer flicks this is actually in my top 5 movies because a lot of other movies have been so disappointing. This probably won't end up in my top 5 for the year, but if it does, well then.........
