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PUBLIC ENEMIES
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Depp plays the character like a human being, similar to how he always does, not some over-the-top, larger than life figure from fiction that he could have played him as. He makes the tough choices and judges the world in black and white and yeah, he’s similar to a Robin Hood. And Bale, his opposing figure, cuts a figure that is trying to put his best foot forward against a person America has fallen in love with, and instead, he’s the villain in so many people’s eyes. Bale is a character actor who pisses me off on one movie and makes me love him the next (see Terminator for the movie that sucked this year). But here, he strides through the film, shoulders shrugged, and I loved every minute of it.
There are too many familiar faces that show up all over the place for no reason. It’s like a Hollywood version of Who’s Who when you’ve got a scene with Leelee Sobieski and another with Claire from Lost and Deacon Frost from Blade and David Wenham from 300 and so many other people that you just want to shake Michael Mann. I mean, did Pretty Boy Floyd really need to be played by that Step Up jackass? No, no it didn’t. When you realize it’s him, you just shake your head.
It might feel realistic, but to someone who loves film, it just leaves you wondering, what the hell? And the sound is off all the place, probably because of the cameras used. You can tell when we’re getting ADR work because you can tell what people are saying, and other times, when it’s all captured on the one camera, you’re looking around to make sure maybe someone heard what was said. And the length of the film is bad. It drags. And drags. And when you watch a long film, and you can pinpoint at least 10 scenes that you can cut, you know there is a problem.
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It goes without saying, Johnny Depp is just awesome in this movie. Think
DeNiro and Pacino in Heat and instead you have Depp and Bale in Public
Enemies. It’s essentially the 30s version of Heat, but Depp and Bale are
great.
There is just too much going on. Simply too much. When Heat came
out, there weren’t many things like it, now, we’ve been inundated
every year with 6 movies or more similar to it. So Public Enemies
just feels like an also-ran at this point, not a game-changer.
Not the same piece of crap as Terminator Salvation, and surely not the
best piece of cinema this summer, you have to feel bad for the actors
involved. This could have been a great crime drama, but instead, it’s
slightly better than Last Man Standing. Ask for more in your crime films
people.