Box Office Review: Public Enemies [2009]
Reviewed by Richard Lee Zuras
Released July 1, 2009
2 hr. 20 min.
Michael Mann/Universal
Johnny Depp
Christian Bale
Marion Cotillard
Billy Crudup
Jason Clarke
Giovanni Ribisi
If you aren’t Michael Bay (Transformers), you can do a lot of good with $80 million. Michael Mann has spent his money wisely. The actors are top notch, and in the case of both Depp and Crudup more than even that. The music, in spite of Mann’s penchant for bombast, is quite moving (very Deadwood in places). The costumes are striking even in their appropriate sameness, and if you care, heavily researched and correct. The set pieces are so unbelievable that even Roger Ebert felt obliged to walk through them during production.
There are no wasted scenes of Michael Bay-like special effects here. But there are gunfights. A lot of guns and smoke from guns and bullets hitting walls and a lot of gunshot bloody holes to keep people’s interests. And there is a reason for that: there isn’t much in the screenplay to hold onto.
The actors play their parts with reserve, and that is fine. Appropriate even. The script never allows true interplay. Many scenes begin the process of engagement only to be met by a steely eyed look or a grunt. The movie is simply trying to hard to be a classic when it should have allowed its parts to exist as a film. Even the title–in its attempts to invoke that most classic of gangster films–is a reach.
Cotillard is wasted here, as is Ribiski and a host of other fine actors. A movie that runs 2 and a third hours simply must engage and explore its characters and their inter-relationships: even if the source material (book) does not. If the movie looks a little glossy it is for a reason: the only two ways to hide a weak script are special effects and gloss. And these days, nothing glosses like gunplay. Mann’s Miami Vice was an exercise in gloss, and with this entry, and his upcoming Heat re-make/spin-off, Mann seems poised to circle this drain for awhile. That’s a shame.
But the good the movie has going for it (and again I don’t mean the screenplay’s obvious attempts at summer blockbuster catch phrases), is almost enough. But for the honest movie-goer you can feel yourself saying I want to like this…oh, and he’s in it too? I love him…wow that was cool…and et cetera, et cetera. And this movie should have been so much more than an exercise in what might have been.
Many pundits say this is the type of movie that has led to the coming 10 picture Oscar category. And that’s a shame too. The Junos and Little Miss Sunshines are earning their spots in that coveted category by pushing these inferior movies out. Shouldn’t we ask for more from a movie like Public Enemies instead of doubling a category to assure an Oscar telecast crowd? Or perhaps we could go high enough in number to encapsulate a movie like Transformers 2. Just a thought.
Bottom line 3.5/5.0