Hole in the heart

Public Enemies
15, Nationwide

Anyway, Dillinger goes on the run with his gang, which later includes the increasingly scary Stephen Graham (from This Is England) as Baby Face Nelson. I love gangster names. I could have been Oldie Face Ross. They run, rob a bank, run some more, get banged up in jail, bust out of jail and then it’s a shoot-out with their main adversary, FBI agent Melvin Purvis as played by Christian Bale speaking in the weirdest, raspiest voice you ever did hear. (For God’s sake, man, take a drink of water!) Purvis is a single-purpose character with a single-purpose personality — he wants Dillinger, and he wants him now — and is essentially dehumanised. What little heart there is in this movie is provided by Marion Cotillard, who plays Dillinger’s girl, Billie Frechette. Cotillard is devastatingly luscious and right at the end I did feel for her; the only time I felt anything.

Meanwhile, Depp plays Dillinger as enigmatic and iconic; inscrutable even. He does almost everything with a small look here, a small look there, so you’d think that when Dillinger is given lines, he will really say something, but he doesn’t. When he takes down-at-heel Billie to her first, smart restaurant and she says she feels uneasy because of where she comes from, what does Dillinger say? Yes, you’ve got it, he says: ‘It’s not where you come from that’s important, it’s where you are going to.’ And what if she were going to the chiropodist to have her rough skin sloughed off? Would that count?

This is a stylish film, with a stylish central performance, and it’s by no means unwatchable. It’s just there is very little to get your teeth into, and I do like something to get my teeth into. This is why I like sandwiches so much. And two rounds, please...