PUBLIC ENEMIES dir. Michael Mann

The week that was 12/07/09 - 19/07/09 saw me visit the cinema on three separate occasions. A frankly rather sad total and one that I am sure many studio heads can only dream of achieving on a weekly basis. The reason for my sudden descent into cinematic oblivion has a lot to do with two particularly important summer tent-pole releases, the term given to major blockbuster films whose certainty of profit will prop-up their flakier titles and drooping audience figures throughout the following year. I will leave the respective merits and disappointments of Sacha Baron Cohen's 'Bruno' and Warner Bros. 'Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince' to the vast array of comment and criticism on offer in publications ranging from The Sun to The Economist, but suffice to say that whilst they were both perfectly enjoyable, neither was particularly fulfilling or daring.
To a large extent Michael Mann's new release, the Depression-era crime epic 'Public Enemies', staring Johnny Depp and Christian Bale, leaves the viewer with a similar sense of disappointment. Just as Baron Cohen has found after the stunning success of Borat back in 2006, there is a sense of expectation surrounding any new Mann film; a director and writer who has managed to weld the commercial pitfalls of the Hollywood studio system with beautifully shot, interesting and truly cinematic movies. The very titles Heat, The Insider, Collateral, and Manhunter to name but a few, are immediately recognizable iconic bastions of craft and visual brilliance in American Cinema, stretching back for well over three decades of universal success.
As a result of this impressive legacy and as Mark Kemode so eloquently explained on his BBC Radio Five Live review of the film last week, we the audience are perhaps rather too desperate for Mann to succeed in quenching our collective thirst for a worthwhile film in the desert that is popular cinema in 2009. So far this summer we have been offered an array of disappointing Hollywood action flicks in the vein of Terminator Last Salvation and Transformers 2 and a series of funny but mindless comedies such as The Hangover. With Mann at the helm and a reformulation of perhaps his most popular film Heat, along with two of Hollywood's finest actors facing off in a Pacino/De Niro style gangster thriller and supported by an exciting cast, large budget and total creative control, everything suggested Public Enemies would be another masterpiece.
What we get however is a beautifully shot film, enhanced by solid performances, brutal realism, breathtaking attention to detail and intelligent depth, but crucially lacking in character connection and emotional sympathy. As we follow Depp's enigmatic but charming John Dillinger; at once a bank robber, gang leader, violent thug, movie fan and selfless romantic, strut through the American Midwest at the height of the 1930's Depression taking down banks and orchestrating prison breaks, do we the audience find an emotional resonance in his actions? Do we identify with his lonely masculinity and intense affection for Billie Fenchette (played brilliantly by French actress Marion Cotillard)? Do we pity his violent friends and fellow gangsters as they are picked off by Melvin Purvis' FBI team? Do we even care when Dillinger is finally executed in the dying moments of the film?
Sadly the answers to all these questions is a resounding "No!" Despite every efficient frame of rich visual pleasure and every twist in the surprising, dramatic script this is a film that leaves its audience feeling cold. Despite his desire to back away from the long shadow of Heat, even Mann cannot deny the similarities between the two films, but where once the viewer found the mysterious and lonely De Niro an engaging criminal and the self-righteous Pacino a fascinating policeman, prepared to abandon his family in his persuit of the criminal, Dillinger and Purvis are individualistic characters without social connections or emotional sympathy. As a result the dynamic interplay between good/evil, gangster/cop, man/family and morality/law feels dull and forced. Dillinger is essentially a bad man with few redeeming features, whilst Purivs is merely one of many cinematic detectives: oily, reserved, skilled and solidly moralistic. We are watching a film where the characters don't surprise us, where our feelings and inclinations don't disturb us and where ultimately we know exactly what happens before it takes place.
As a result Mann has probably produced the summer's most impressive film so far, but one that looses emotional resonance through its cast of bland protagonists and contrived attempts to create epic studies of human character and in the blinding glare of recent American history.