Movie Review: Public Enemies

Public Enemies was a highly anticipated movie for me and it mostly met my expectations. The film tries to blend the best of modern and old school filmmaking to create something new. Sometimes it succeeds and sometimes it doesn't but it's always interesting. This isn't your typical summer film, there aren't major explosions every two minutes and the dialogue doesn't suck.

It's been a very long time since we've gotten a worthy 20s-30's crime film. So I did enjoy the film but it also didn't give me the throwback feeling I would have liked. The film is shot using a Digital Camera mostly handheld which is very obvious from the opening moments of the film. For some films this works but I don't think this is how a film like this should be shot. The clothing was wonderful and definitely invoked a filling of being in the 30's this only made me more disappointed that the film wasn't shot properly. Even some of the performances by Billy Crudup and Johnny Depp felt like they could have been filmed 50 years ago.

Johnny Depp was just great here really keeping the film entertaining even when the pacing was off. He did a good job of portraying the values that John Dillinger stood for and how he would steal from the bank but not from the customers. They have this already there in the script but Depp just adds that extra bit that makes you believe him. Most of the acting is pretty good, the only part that was a bit weak was Christian Bale but I still think he did an alright job just nothing memorable. One of the main problems I had was with the love story and how it was handled. I never got the feeling that he would go back in order to be with Billie. The characters say it enough but I don't feel like I saw it. The relationship starts so suddenly and has very little on screen development before the end of the film.

The opening act of this movie was probably my favorite part of the film. There is very little dialogue and we get to see how Dillinger and his friends functioned and how they did what they did and see why they are the best at it. The action scenes are all really nicely executed especially a shootout that takes place at night later into the film that is really suspenseful, part of which is that you really care about Dillinger. The film could have been better but it was still quite enjoyable and the first good 30's crime movie in a long time.

4 out of 5