Resident Film Critic Movie Review On: Bye Bye Blackbird - Michael Mann's Public Enemies

Michael Mann's Public Enemies is an honest depiction of a life that could only be true in film. John Dillinger is played by Johnny Depp, another public figure whose inner life is ostensibly unknowable, and his foil, the budding G-man Melvin Purvis, is played by Christian Bale. As Depp plays him, he is a romantic, disciplined figure of the public's mythic conscience; Robin Hood in a three-piece suit with a Tommy gun at his side. Above him, around him and to him, Mann emphasizes not only the birth of organized, capitalist-driven crime but the sheer thrill of being romanced by such a public figure.

At a drab Midwest prison circa 1933, Mann begins with a breathless prison break orchestrated by Dillinger and compatriot John "Red" Hamilton (Jason Clarke) to release the bulk of their Chicago gang, which included mentor Harry Pierpont (David Wenham) and Homer Van Peter (Stephen Dorff). His return to Chicago is marked by a robbery and a meeting with his counterpart Alvin Karpis (Giovanni Ribisi) but is sent into overdrive by the appearance of sassy coat-check girl Billie Frechette, played by the excellent Marion Cotillard. They fall madly in love and stay together even as he is sent to prison again and narrowly escapes capture until his infamous death in front of the Biograph Theater in Chicago in June 1934.

Public Enemies is set during the depression but nothing on the screen suggests the depleted environs, save for the public's love for the concept of simply taking the government's money whenever they please. Mann's film is not a chronicle of American history as much as it is a chronicle of a pivotal point in America's love for crime and their need to know that a life of crime is always possible and that it does indeed pay. A recent New York Times article recounted the production of Public Enemies, which began as a film about Jewish mastermind Karpis, as a hope of chronicling the half-decade or so when Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Ma Barker and Baby Face Nelson were celebrities of high prestige, hidden in plain sight.

In Mann's film, Nelson is played by the great British character actor Stephen Graham, a force to be reckoned with in Shane Meadows' This is England. He is, along with Karpis and Dillinger, the reason that J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup in fine form) is seeking to turn his Bureau of Investigation into a Federal body, with Purvis as his lead G-man. As fatalistic as the man he chases, Purvis is introduced as he guns down Pretty Boy Floyd (a brief Channing Tatum) in an orchard and exits as the smallest cog in Dillinger's death. Betrayed by father figure Hoover when he is asked to "take off the white gloves," Purvis is, as the film consistently points out, just as disillusioned with the embryonic FBI as Dillinger is with the initial steps of the Chicago mafia's clandestine agreements with law enforcement to cut the chord with Dillinger and his lot.

As with his last film, the nocturnal free-flow Miami Vice, Public Enemies at once works to concrete Mann's immense talents while further pointing out his minor but telling weaknesses. Soundtracked mainly by Mort Dixon's "Bye Bye Blackbird" and other depression-era lullabies, there is still that indulgence in steely electric guitars to emphasize action and pace, less prominent and much preferred over the swells of Audioslave that dogged both Miami Vice and Collateral.

Like The Dark Knight, Enemies is an unlikely summer entry; one that must accept certain conventions to ensure its box office yet consistently upends and reevaluates the very parts of its DNA that make it a hopeful box office titan. Paced smartly and fitted with solid ensemble performers, which also includes the stage actor Stephen Lang and Rory Cochrane as Purvis' partners, Public Enemies enlists digital cinematography in the most provocative commercial form to date, adding looseness and clarity to a genre usually noted for its tight framing. Wielded by Mann's staple lenser, the crafty and deft Dante Spinotti, Mann's camera peers into the film's nighttime siege of Nelson and Dillinger's woodland hideout with an uncanny ease and thrilling precision; the film's aesthetic feels as if it's on the lam along with its central figure.

Depp's performance, calibrated and deployed with a leopard-like charm, doesn't outshine Bale nor does it work to tower above prominent screen partner Cotillard. Mann has always been an expert at harmonious acting: You may remember the scene between Pacino and DeNiro in Heat but it is not the film's most memorable scene. The film, written by Irish scribe Ronan Bennett along with Mann and Southland creator Ann Biderman, is based on Bryan Burrough's astute study of the crime waves prominent in the early 1930s and the subsequent birth of Hoover's FBI; the film's relation to movement and the chase rather than the national reflection speaks to the gone-tomorrow mentality of the era more than the vision of a thousand breadlines. Like its two lead characters, Public Enemies has certain nostalgia for the flash of early crime, the simplicity of it; it has an open distaste for procedure and concentrates on the swiftness and cunning of these jailhouse playboys. Obviously relating to Dillinger and Purvis, Mann chooses innovation over security, a Tommy gun over a ledger.


Chris Cabin is our very own resident film critic. You can find other reviews at AMC's Filmcritic.com. His opinions are not necessarily those of The KCB.
The KCB: Here is a featurette on the crew and staging of a bank robbery in the film; it echoes all of Michael Mann's crime film work, he loves the idea of a crew:

Michael Mann Is My Favorite Director - Public Enemies Trailer

The trailer, apart from being kick ass and Johnny Depp assuming a very bravura and tough guy role (something he's rarely been able to do since Donnie Brasco I feel, which is one of his best movies) that probably would go to Sean Penn in the 80s but Depp's got that charm that seems right for the role of John Dillinger.



Mann has always been fascinated by history, especially American crime history (he's always very detailed in his research and has consultants, usually from Chicago). Dillinger's story could be really interesting in his hands because I don't feel like he's out there to sensationalize anything. He'll let the gravity of the actors' work pull people in, but he'll get the details right and hopefully from that a great sense of place will come about. This is a chance for him to do another period piece and he seems to go through phases of what he likes and doesn't like. He's always loved the pulsing electronica soundtracks (evident here), unabashed hard rock music (evident here), and what looks to be a combo of no-nonsense action (evident here) as well as some of his famous wide angles, but less of the static shots of Heat and more of the free flowing cameras of Collateral and Miami Vice (which can be nice, but I still love his more composed feel in Thief and such).

Christian Bale plays a hero, as usual, and he's really good at that anyway, so why not? I'm kind of surprised that someone like Campbell Scott hasn't had the opportunity to work with Mann, I think it would be a great pairing.

And Oscar winner Marion Cotillard finally gets a big American break in what looks to be another in a line of great female characters that Mann has been able to bring to the screen.

I just feel like there is so much to like about Mann's work, and this looks to have potential to be a great rebound after a decent but overall disappointing effort in Miami Vice (I liked it but I couldn't help but feel there was stuff to be trimmed; Collateral was a great exercise and with Vice it just went a bit over the top). He's got a great mix of cerebral and pop and always has pretty sharp scripts that don't insult the viewer's intelligence. On top of that though, he's a filmmaker who understands what moves an audience visually while staying down to earth and authentic. His movies easily get under my skin because there's a comfortable flow, highly stylized and appealing.

I'm going to bet this will be better than The Newton Boys. It could reach great crime drama heights too, with plenty of other films to live up to such as Bonnie and Clyde, The Untouchables, the Cagney thrillers, etc. etc.

I always thought that The Asphalt Jungle was a precursor to Mann's type of filmmaking. Assured visuals, smart criminals with clear motives, a sense of fate and danger that gives the character development and plot a suspenseful cloak. His style is modern though; I wish I could see a movie done like they did in the 30s and 40s, the very stilted production that nevertheless feels like how they made movies in the Golden Age. It's not just the period represented, but the style of the film production. Like The Good German, but more successful.

Anywho, enjoy the trailer over and over again, because one day, Mann's going to get an Oscar of some sort.

Recent Netflixing: Brotherhood - Season 1

Like most people who have good computer monitors with which to really take advantage of visual media, I enjoy Netflix "Watch Instantly" as a means of getting into something quick with just a click of a button. Granted, Time Warner Cable decides on occasion to slow our internet in Sunset Park to frustrating speeds where the ability to playback is hampered, but I finally was able to get through Brotherhood: Season 1 after a couple months of watching episode by episode.

Titled by particular passages from the Bible, Brotherhood is a very, very serious show. There is scarcely any humor to be found; I found myself after each episode locked into a poker-face mode. Even when characters do laugh, it is usually pensive, nervous, or faked. The severity though is well-deserved and warranted, because even though the plots and subplots of this Showtime serial have been covered before in a multitude of films, the tight production and scrappy, methodical aura it brings to the table in the first season won me over by the end.

A lot of people have described it as an Irish-American version of the Sopranos, but I think it's very different after you get past the surface plot of a family that is involved with a gangster outfit. Brotherhood has its own suburban vibe, set in Providence in a fictional district called the Hill. Michael Caffee (played with a creepy, blazing staunchness by Jason Issacs) is the violent, imposing brother who comes back to the Hill after years of absence. Tommy Caffee (the strong chin of Jason Clarke) is the family man and a district representative struggling to make ends meet but otherwise content with his situation. The Caffees are upheld to a high but vulnerable standard by the family matriarch who lives down the road from Tommy and who houses Michael upon his return, Rose Caffee. Without getting into too much detail about the great supporting cast, just know that everyone knows everyone in this town. Whether you're a politician, a cop, or a gangster, you go to the same functions, you attend the same weddings, your kids go to the same school, and you shake hands with everyone and put on a nice face. It is the way life is here. There is an intimacy to the network of characters that makes the Hill very real and very detailed. It could be affairs with old high school flames, which both Michael and Tommy's wife, Eileen, get into with respective partners. It could be the strained but genuine friendship between a cop, Giggs, and Marty, a union man knee deep in criminal activity.

The production is not flashy at all, and at some point one would think that it could be considered fairly bland or low budget compared to more stylish shows on cable. Yet, the muted tones and tight compositions by directors like Nick Gomez actually give the atmosphere a claustrophobic feel and the performances benefit from this. The violence is abrupt and unglamorous, the language terse and without meandering philosophy. There is a pervasive amount of anguish exuded by every character, and it starts to break the viewer down by the end of the season in a good way, because the plot starts to pick up when new lawmen are introduced. You realize what drives Tommy to do good by his ambition and principles, and why Michael's disruptive, and by turns naive and manipulative behavior cause such a central rift that is the heart of the show. Their mother Rose, a perpetual victim and yet, seemingly ignorant to her own son's bad deeds shrouded in her need to be a supportive mother. Eileen, drug abuser and adulterer, struggling with the life of a housewife. Pete, a sober man struggling under the psychological bullying that Michael unleashes. Giggs, a hard drinking, always-stuck-between-a-rock-and-another-rock detective who is always forced to do the wrong thing. These characters are distinctly Irish-American because of the history, the feelings of moral guilt, and an incredible sense of community with a blinded, self-destructive nature. They have permeated the town hall, the police force, and organized crime to be pillars of the neighborhood, but at the same time, there is an incredible psychological struggle and an actual political battle for the Hill. When the immigrants become the status quo, what do they struggle against but themselves?

I don't think Season 1 is perfect. There are some subplots that do not go anywhere throughout the season, or become repetitive, such as Eileen's drug use, Pete's alcoholism, and Mary Rose's (Tommy's eldest daughter) coming of age. It weighs the plot down considerably in the middle of the season. However, they all pay off at least somewhat by the last two episodes or so, and hopefully are addressed as well in Season 2 (which has not yet been released on DVD).

What is really unique about the show is the political machinations that Tommy has to juggle. Yes there have been movies about politics before, but using politics as a weapon on such a local scale with such detail and quickness makes the show very tangible. You see a microcosm of negotiations, string pulling, questionable ethics, betrayals, and under-the-surface conflicts of interest that you can't even imagine what it must be like at a larger level. Tommy tries very hard not to get sucked into power the wrong way and to stick to his principles, but his steadfast nature hurts him just as much, if not more so, than his compromises. In the end he must turn to his brother, and what you have is a very mature depiction of what it means to above all, put family first, because with a world full of uncertainty, it is the only thing you can count on.

Here is a great video summary of the show on Youtube: