Movie Review:  Public Enemies

Just two noncommercial movies for me to announce this morning, one tonight and one next Tuesday, the Alfresco series and the one at the Blank Page. Tonight, Alfresco shows a pleasant romantic comedy starring John Cusack and Daphne Zuniga, directed by Rob Reiner, called The Sure Thing; it's a road trip with antagonism turning into love, nothing new but good relaxing fun, and the last of the Alfresco series, which gives way to the heat after 8 tonight at the Brickyard, 129 North Rock Island.

The Blank Page Tuesday will be a lot more sombre with perhaps the greatest Italian neorealist movies of the post-World War II wave, Vittorio de Sica's The Bicycle Thieves, a starkly realistic picture of the ruin that can be imposed by what would seem to be a fairly minor crime; it'll break your heart without sentimentality at 7:30 Tuesday at the Blank Page gallery, 917 West Douglas.

And commercially, we have what is supposed to be an old-fashioned gangster story in Public Enemies, which puzzles me a little.

A reviewer in the Eagle said "it's difficult to imagine a time when a bank robber was considered...to be a national hero," which suggests that at least one reviewer ought to leave the theatre and read a newspaper or two about our current financial situation. But being a public hero, which is barely mentioned and seldom shown, since we almost never leave either Johnny Depp's Dillinger or Christian Bale's FBI man Melvin Purvis, nearly always at work except for a brief scene in which Depp, in a very standard fashion, picks up Marion Cotillard as his girl friend; at one point Depp says he's having too much fun to think about the future, but her almost never smiles and I don't recall that he ever laughs. And it isn't clear whether he has any friends as such; apparently he is supposed to have one, but they have no relaxed scenes. Even Cotillard, Oscared for playing Edith Piaf last year, has only one love scene with him, most of her other scenes, and not many of them, consisting of goodbyes or telephone calls because he doesn't take her along when he robs banks.

Another reviewer in the Eagle called Public Enemies a character study, but except for Depp’s Dillinger, no character is studied, and even he is apparently supposed to be motivated by a spirit of fun and adventure, but we see very little fun and no adventure that does not pay off in money. Even Dillinger’s famous loyalty to colleagues in the form of jail breaks is undercut by Public Enemies’ opening with somebody breaking him out, suggesting that such gallantry is not unusual.

There is no study of the Depression, either, though eventually we do get hints of changes in the crime game that leave the Dillinger type of one-man entrepreneurship out in the cold.

So what are we left with? Johnny Depp does what he can with his dour material, and of course he has a charisma that his Dillinger can’t avoid: but it’s Depp’s, not the character’s. We have a lot of tommy-gun fire and a car crash that does NOT end in an orange explosion. We have a lot of interesting period detail in sets and costumes, and a lot of shiny new cars and spotless streets. We have a handheld camera that every so often jiggles and moves out of focus to remind us that we are in the presence of ART. And we have Christian Bale with a face of stone, beyond event the old poker-faced acting style. One thing follows another like history, but there’s no real development and nobody and nothing to root for.

Public Enemies won’t bore you, but it won’t involve you either, except in that you are a Depp fan. If that and a lot of action and production values are enough, enjoy.