Mann I Wish It Was Good

The much anticipated summer flick of choice now, Public Enemies, a film by Mr. Mann, director of such greats as Heat, Collateral and Miami Vice, a film that swayed me from hate to love within 15 minutes of it's hard to follow intricately brilliant action drama.

Public Enemies is much the same in that the dialogue holds the key, but you have to listen carefully, but I mean really carefully this time, as the only things consistent in this film are the odd score choices and the gun sound levels, the dialogue is impossible to hear at some points and crystal clear in others.

The film is about a few months with John Dillinger, or maybe even weeks, leading up to his death by Patrick Bateman, he really hated those business cards. So Johnny Depp acts charismatic and fun loving and does some bank raids and falls in love, whilst Melvin Purvis trashes lights, runs around and shouts for answers.

The only problem is the film is a hollow shell.
You never once care about what happens to anyone, we never find much out, are invited in or really feel highs and lows of the events, the bank robberies are a disappointing bore, the shootouts while trade-markedly loud, miss a lot of humanity and aren't interesting, and it's runtime is 30 minutes too long for nothing to actually happen.

The HD cameras with a handheld feel is odd, like a docu-drama set in the '30's, and whilst it looks extraordinary, it feels boring and sluggish, trying to set up the period subtly doesn't work, and when they go a bit in your face with newsreels and radio news it feels a little embarrassing.

Whilst it looks and sounds alright and the acting is solid, Public Enemies offers absolutely nothing and should really be ignored, clearly when he works with real people Mr. Mann can't get into their minds like he does fictional creations.
6/10