Tag: John Dillinger

Another look at ‘Enemies’

I must say, while I’m still struggling to see the use of The Auteurs as a social networking site, it’s a smashing source of film writing. The range and intelligence of discourse there is a joy to read, and is rapidly making the site a daily essential.

A case in point is today’s superb three-headed discussion of “Public Enemies” — well-timed given that today (as noted at the Film Experience) marks the 75th anniversary of John Dillinger’s death.

I’ve said before that I don’t think the film has generally received the critical credit it deserves, so it’s a treat to read three equally well-informed writers debating its complexities, and its relationship to the Michael Mann canon, in more detail than any review I’ve read. Daniel Kasman is upfront in his enthusiasm, declaring it the year’s best American film so far. (Short of “The Hurt Locker,” I don’t disagree.)

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July 22, 2009
Celebration of amorality?

Amid the mixed critical reaction to “Public Enemies,” I’ve been surprised at how few critics have responded to the film’s contemporary resonances: the dialogue (intentional or otherwise) between the film’s portrait of the Great Depression and the bleak economic landscape of the present day.

One reader recently (and rather astutely) noted the film’s general lack of interest in the “people’s champion” side of Dillinger’s persona, which might indeed have brought the film’s social agenda more to the fore. But David Cox at the Guardian believes the film already celebrates Dillinger quite amply, and draws parallels between the film’s events and the present-day corruption of the banking system. The only difference, he argues, is that the Dillingers of today lie within the system:

As he did in Heat, Mann toys with the much-favoured Hollywood theme of moral equivalence between wrongdoers and their state-ordained antagonists … It’s this air of pervasive amorality that most clearly links Mann’s tale with its present-day analogue. We may be seeing less bloodshed now, but we’re not short of our own kind of depravity. In some ways it’s even worse than the version that Mann portrays.

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July 6, 2009
REVIEW: “Public Enemies” (***1/2)

Los Angeles Film Festival

There is a moment very early in Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies,” featured today as the centerpiece exhibition of the Los Angeles Film Festival, when Depression-era criminal John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) stares into the dying eyes of friend and mentor Walter Dietrich (James Russo) as his band of cohorts flees the scene of a somewhat botched prison escape attempt. The sequence is at once curiously beautiful and unmistakably somber, of a piece with the filmmaker’s coldly calculated vision of a man caught up in the freedom of his rebellious lifestyle, yet haunted by the specter of his own obsolescence.

The film marks an exciting return to muscular, patient storytelling form for Mann. After dubious stabs at commercial appeal in “Collateral” and “Miami Vice,” films that certainly have followers and admittedly plumb thematic depths no other filmmaker would have reached, the director has painted his most resonant character study since 1995’s “Heat.”

Headlined by an emotive, at times unsettlingly internalized performance by Depp, the film amplifies Mann’s penchant for nuance while marrying it with a well-exercised gift for staging unique if not inimitable action set pieces. But for all the director’s classic cinematic accoutrement, the film nevertheless stands apart from Mann’s portfolio for its fully realized vision of a doomed romance highlighted by, rather than merely peripheral to, the machismo on display.

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June 23, 2009
Michael Mann goes deep on ‘Public Enemies’

There’s a reason Michael Mann is my favorite working director. Consistently saddled with accusations of unyielding perfectionism and idiosyncrasy, he is a filmmaker who sets out to make exactly the film he wants to make every time, and he has the goods to back up the artistic aggression. The last two times out of the gate (2004’s “Collateral” and 2006’s “Miami Vice”) didn’t exactly capitalize on his considerable talents, but when “Public Enemies,” which I saw last night, plays the Los Angeles Film Festival next week and eventually opens nationwide July 1, I think audiences and critics alike will see it as a return to muscular, yet patient storytelling form.

Patrick Goldstein, writing at The Big Picture blog in the Los Angeles Times, has crafted a wonderfully fair and engaging interview piece with the director (which is also a coup for Universal publicity). He doesn’t skirt the issue when it comes to Mann’s industry infamy, dedicating a considerable chunk to the director’s professional head-butting with Sony honcho Amy Pascal concerning the particular’s of 2001’s “Ali.” But the work stands head and shoulders above the off-the-screen conflicts every time. Says Pascal in the piece, “You forget about the pain of childbirth too. I mean, whatever you go through, you still want another baby. It’s like that with Michael too.”

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June 16, 2009