Hole in the heart

Deborah Ross

Wednesday, 1st July 2009

Public Enemies
15, Nationwide

Public Enemies is Michael Mann’s film about the last year in the life of American bank robber John Dillinger (as played by Johnny Depp) and it just kind of drags. I think it may be because unlike other films of this type following outlaws of this type — Bonnie and Clyde, Butch and Sundance, but not Renée and Renato, who have plenty to answer for but are not outlaws of any type, so of no relevance — it doesn’t ask you to take sides; doesn’t invite you to warm to Dillinger and hope he somehow gets away. Look, there is much to admire in this film. It is sublimely elegant. The cars are beautiful. Johnny Depp is lush. And I especially liked the way the machine guns exploded with cackling bursts of white fire, just as they do in comic books. But it’s as if the whole thing has been emotionally cauterised. It holds you at arm’s length. As such, I found it peculiarly unsatisfying. If it had been a restaurant meal, I’d have come home and had a sandwich. (Actually, I often do. I am shamingly greedy.)

So, how does the film open? Good question, and well-timed, as that is just what I’m about to get on to. Well done, you! It opens excitingly enough with Dillinger masterminding the mass escape of some of his old pals from Indiana State Penitentiary, cackle, cackle, bang, bang! The year is 1933 and it is, according to the front titles, ‘the golden year of bank robbery’. However, while J. Edgar Hoover’s fledgling FBI regard Dillinger as ‘Public Enemy Number One’, the public regard him as a folk hero. It’s in the midst of the Great Depression, and they have no sympathy for the banks, which they blame for the country’s troubles, but although we are led to understand this we are never shown it. The socio-political conditions of the time — the desperation, the poverty — are almost wholly ignored which is fair enough but, with context, Dillinger might have seemed less bloodless and more heroic somehow.

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