Public Enemies

Michael Mann is, quite simply, the master of crime cinema. His neurotic obsession with his ‘men and their work’ spans all the way back to THIEF (which I, ashamedly, haven’t seen), was perfected with HEAT, and has been tinkered with visually in COLLATERAL, MIAMI VICE, and now PUBLIC ENEMIES. If I remember correctly, most (if not all) were released during the summer blockbuster season. But make no mistake; Michael Mann’s action movie is nothing like Michael Bay’s action movie. We can all be thankful for that. You can’t simply check your brain at the box office counter for a movie ticket and a box of popcorn. He demands your attention; to characters, to setting, to actions, to details.

PUBLIC ENEMIES uses the non-fiction narrative of the same name (by Bryan Burroughs) as its source material. The narrative tracks the criminal exploits of the likes of John Dillinger, Alvin Karpis and the Barker gang, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Bonnie and Clyde. The fledgling Bureau of Investigation (or the FBI as we now know it) and its young leader, J. Edgar Hoover, are responsible for bringing these criminals to justice in the first War on Crime. The book itself is a mesmerizing piece of reporting, using FBI files released within the past two decades or so to do most of the work. As fascinating as it is to read about the short-lived criminal lives of these characters, it is equally fascinating to see the level of ineptitude shown by the newborn FBI and its ‘college boy’ agents in their chase of these crooks.

The purpose of both the narrative and the film, I believe, is to dispel the mythology created for many of these characters by Hollywood. Bonnie and Clyde weren’t the picturesque, sympathetic images portrayed by Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. They were dirty (seriously, they didn’t bathe for months at a time) rednecks who murdered anyone that disrupted their fun. Ma Barker wasn’t some evil, plotting grandmother. She was the mother of two criminals who nagged them incessantly. Now there’s John Dillinger and the ‘Robin Hood’ myth. Yeah, he robbed from the rich. But none of it was given to the poor. There were accounts in newspapers of Dillinger telling bank customers to put their money away; that they were only there for the bank’s money. But that’s where Dillinger’s generosity ended. He was a bank robber, pure and simple. His celebrity built up because he took from those who many thought were responsible for the Depression.

Mann wants us to see Dillinger for who he was in that short span (1933 to 1934) when he was living in the moment. Those expecting HEAT: 1930s EDITION will be extremely disappointed. Melvin Purvis is no Vincent Hanna. He is just a part of Dillinger’s story that is necessary. In fact, Dillinger and Purvis never actually meet in Burroughs’ narrative. I understand Michael Mann’s revisionist history in the screenplay. This is Hollywood. Some changes were necessary to the story in order to make a more compelling movie. Some will complain that Christian Bale’s Melvin Purvis is underdeveloped. That’s honestly how he was portrayed in the book. He, along with a majority of the Bureau’s agents, was in over his head. Losing suspects because of poor surveillance, getting agents killed in shoot-outs because of a lack of formal gun training, and the fiasco at Little Bohemia where three civilians were killed (along with several agents) while the bad guys got away.

Mann drops you into Dillinger’s life as he’s breaking some friends out of a jail in Michigan City. There’s no backstory. You’re just dropped right into the proceedings. Mann has been criticized for this in films like ALI, COLLATERAL, and MIAMI VICE. Critics of his storytelling techniques feel he shorts the moviegoer on character development. But this, in my opinion, is where Mann truly excels as a visual storyteller. Beginning with ALI in 2001, Mann has experimented with filming in High Definition in each of his last four features. His experimental techniques have divided audiences, love it or hate it. Granted, HD cameras provide a more grainy print than film does, but Mann uses the benefits of HD cameras to tell his stories. His cameras are mostly handheld throughout, ready at a moment’s notice to move as the story dictates. There is an immediacy to this type of filmmaking. Mann uses extreme close-ups on his characters (pores seep from the screen in HD, as close as many of us will ever get to Johnny Depp and Christian Bale) and one feels as if they’re right there, in the middle of the action.

And, oh, the action! Mann choreographs and directs the most brilliant action sequences. Beginning with the aforementioned prison break, Mann starts the movie with a bang. Speaking of bangs, no one that I know of in film makes gunfire sound like real gunfire like Mann does. When gunfire erupts, it’s like you’re right there in the gunfight. Mann stages brilliant bank heists with the efficiency that Dillinger and his gang once did, right down to the tiniest of details. He is also obsessed with every bit of historical accuracy he can muster in his films. Mann stages Dillinger’s most famous prison escape (with a wooden gun) at the actual prison it took place in over 70 years ago. The climax of this scene also provides for the tensest use of a stoplight in film history.

Mann saves the best action set piece for another historical landmark of Dillinger’s: the Little Bohemia lodge. This scene also serves as a calling card for why HD should be used more often in movies. Mann has shown us in ALI, COLLATERAL, and MIAMI VICE how his cameras penetrate the night. But in the Little Bohemia sequence, he choreographs one of his best action sets, regardless of time of day, in the middle of the night. By the time the Little Bohemia fiasco has passed by, Dillinger’s days of robbing banks are reaching their end.

By the time Dillinger’s story is coming to an end, Mann provides us with one of the best scenes of the movie. Incorporating scenes from the gangster picture, MANHATTAN MELODRAMA, that Dillinger saw on the last night of his life, Mann hits home on the point of telling this story on the big screen. “Die the way you lived. Don’t drag it out,” says Clark Gable’s character as a smirk crosses Dillinger’s face. Dillinger’s celebrity was widespread and his career was accomplished, and he reached all of this within a short span of two years. And even as Dillinger embraces Hollywood’s glamorous image of gangsters played by Clark Gable, the life’s inevitable outcome is awaiting him outside the theater. Everything glamorous and glorious collapsed in one frame for Dillinger, and life went on.