.jeri.

I'm always game for a gangster movie, especially one starring Christian Bale, Johnny Depp, and Marion Cotillard. They're all fine actors who usually make good choices (with the exception of Bale in Terminator Salvation), so I expected to be treated to a good-if-not-great movie when I went to see Public Enemies. I should have realized that Stephen Dorff was attached to the project. Haha. The movie stars Depp as famous criminal John Dillinger, and Bale plays Melvin Purvis, whose goal is to take down Dillinger and his fellows in crime. Cotillard plays a random girl who takes Dillinger's fancy and is basically there for some level of emotional connectivity that really doesn't exist in the film.

Like the second Transformers movie, Public Enemies opens up with action and doesn't let up for what feels like a really long time. If there isn't an action scene, then the camera and editing keep things moving. It's unrelenting and painful. That set the tone for the rest of the movie for me, which was full of visual techniques that bothered me. There's a lot of hand-held camera action, even for non-action scenes, and I'm afraid I just don't see the point of many of them. When there is a steady camera in use, director Michael Mann seems to want the audience to feel like they're in the mix, so there are heads or bodies walking directly in front of the camera. To what end? There's one specific shot of Christian Bale lighting up a cigar that drove me nuts.

I also had a hard time dealing with the lighting in a really pivotal shoot out and chase scene that occurred at night. It was so dark that it was hard to see what was going on, especially when there are three shots of men getting into cars. Which men ended up in which cars, I couldn't tell. Apparently, neither could half our audience, because I heard them murmuring when they thought one person was dead and then saw that person show up alive and well in the next scene.

Part of the trouble may be that there was so little character development for Dillinger's associates that I couldn't distinguish them from each other. In fact the movie doesn't sped a lot of time developing any sort of character. Melvin Purvis goes through the motions of hunting Dillinger, and Dillinger goes through the motions of robbing banks. That's the whole thing.

I did appreciate that Christian Bale took a role with a different dimension to it. He has a different accent and doesn't have to yell or whisper, and that's a nice change of pace for him. I almost think if the movie had been a fictionalized telling from the point of Melvin Purvis, it might have been more interesting. Other notable performances are actually from some of the smaller roles. I was pleased to see Giovanni Ribisi and realize that it took me a while to even recognize him. Likewise, I think Billy Crudup stole the show as J. Edgar Hoover. Poor Marion Cotillard seemed to struggle with having an American accent, and it almost looked like they edited certain scenes to avoid showing her face while she talked; I think they may have even had her record her dialog in studio and added it in later, but that could just be my perception.

Speaking of Cotillard's character, Billie, I am hoping that her name is the reason why at any given time when someone turns on the radio, Billie Holiday is singing. Either that or the radio only ever played Billie Holiday in 1934. Well anyway, Billie was certainly idealized in the movie, and a possible future with her was the only element of Dillinger's character that wasn't completely based on actions, save a small scene between him and a dying cohort. The two have so little time together that their relationship isn't very believable anyway. And so, to boost that relationship, the movie has a few pushes of overly-dramatic music that seems to come out of left field to try and force an emotional response from the audience. I wasn't buying it.

There are some good elements of the movie. I know I've mostly focused on the negative, but they do outweigh the good for me. There are a few moments with good sets, I like the costuming, and I think some elements of the shootouts are entertaining. And there are some good shots, but I felt like they were fewer and farther between than I would have preferred. I never felt much tension or vested interest in any of the characters in Public Enemies, and that distance coupled with the visual style left me unimpressed. So, Ryan, if you're dying to see this movie because of the guns, then I'd recommend you wait to see it at the cheap theater. You might be lucky enough to glimpse them when the cameras are sitting still for a few seconds and the lighting is good.