Public Enemies

When the film is a biographical sketch,this is a problem most directors run up against: where to draw the line between the person and the persona. From a director like Michael Mann,pairing actors such as Depp (playing the charismatic bank robber John Dillinger) against Bale (cast as Special Agent Purvis),you expect to get more of the first. Surprisingly,Mann keeps his film focused mostly on the latter.

In 1933,the fourth year of the Great Depression,the heat is on J Edgar Hoover (played by Crudup),then the director of the Bureau of Investigations,to capture Dillinger,who has been robbing banks and breaking out of prisons with consistent frequency. Desperate to redeem himself,Hoover has brought in Purvis,who has just shot another famous bank robber of the time,Pretty Boy Floyd.

Hoover has declared,interestingly,“a war on crime”,and the Public Enemy No. 1 is Dillinger. The film largely deals with this hunt,where the Agents narrowly miss capturing Dillinger,and when they do,let him embarrassingly get away. There are plenty of shootouts,down alleys and hotel corridors,up dingy staircases and scared streets,and towards the end,in a thick wood.

However,if you get little sense of what Dillinger is about,you wonder what Bale is doing in the scenario. Any one of the faceless Special Agents who are his flunkeys could have done the trick. Bale doesn’t get a chance to display any of the edginess,the shades of right and wrong that he brings to his characters. Depp is equally underused. This role should have been tailor-made for an actor who doles out charm at the lift of an eyebrow. However,even his relationship with Billie Frechette (Coutillard) seems forced,comprising awkward lovemaking and out-of-place conversation.

Mann does have some nice touches,particularly one in a cinema hall where Dillinger is watching a film and the movie is suddenly cut to show a newsreel of the “Public Enemy No. 1”,with people being instructed to look left and right,as “Dillinger may be sitting right beside them”. Of course,nobody looks in the front or back,and Dillinger,who is sitting with his associates,goes unnoticed. But scenes such as this are few and very,very far between. No doubt,Public Enemies is an efficient piece of work,obviously well-researched,and with excellent reproduction of the 1930s. However,like that scene in the hall,it seems to have its eyes focused on everything around Dillinger,but the man himself.

shalini.langer@expressindia.com