And the summer of many disappointments continues.
Michael, Michael, Michael... lurking somewhere within the cavernous depths of your Public Enemies there exists one hell of a film, one loaded with rich characters, pulse-raising set pieces, effortlessly impressive camera work and a fistful of stellar performances. Too bad you didn't release that film instead of the bloated monster that you chose to put on screens.
You'll have to pardon the bitterness a little bit here, it's just that I'm more than a little bit disappointed. Michael Mann, to my mind, is one of the great filmmakers of our time and when word came out that he'd paired Johnny Depp with Christian Bale for the true-life story of John Dillinger and the man tasked with capturing him... well, I wasn't expecting the second coming of Heat, necessarily, but I certainly wouldn't have minded if he'd gone down that road. Public Enemies in the hands of Michael Mann with a cast like the one he assembled had the chance to be something epic. Nobody fuses action with story and character work quite like Mann does, the fusion of talent and content was perfect. I expected excellence. I demanded excellence. Instead I got something that was just okay, and that's not nearly good enough.
We'll start with the bad. First, clocking in at roughly two and a half hours, Public Enemies is about forty five minutes too long. To be fair, the length would have been fine if there was something to it but there just isn't. There are too many pointless and unnecessary subplots, too many characters that add nothing to the story, and rather than elevating the film to epic proportions all that extending the run time out manages to accomplish is create a film that lacks focus and narrative drive. There's no urgency to this, no sense that anyone really cares all that much about what they're doing. Things just sort of happen. Christian Bale as Melvin Purvis? Just okay. Nothing exceptional. Marion Cotillard - following up her Oscar win with a big studio, English language role? Not nearly as good in English as she is in French. Sigh.
On the plus side? Mann continues to impress with the camera, his adoption of digital film allowing him to pursue longer and more complex shots that are hugely impressive when you realize just how long and how complicated his running gun battles are. Depp as Dillinger? Stellar! The supporting cast? Billy Crudup is unrecognizable as J Edgar Hoover, Stephen Graham a whirling dervish of devilish energy as Baby Face Nelson, and though his character is very much one of the unnecessary ones that should have been cut it always makes me happy to see the hugely underappreciated Giovanni Ribisi on screen. Seriously people, this guy's always great and he should be working more.
Did I walk in to Public Enemies expecting too much? I don't think so. I just wanted Mann to live up to the level of his earlier work. And there are certainly flashes of his particular genius, lots of them for extended periods of time, but on the whole this just doesn't live up to his earlier canon.