High definition cheapens solid ‘Enemies’
Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies” proves that the advance of technology is not always pretty.
Shot throughout the Chicago area as well as a good chunk of Wisconsin, “Public Enemies” chronicles the 1930s game of cat-and-mouse that bank robber John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) played with Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), the federal lawman sworn to bring him down.
“Public Enemies” is a solid crime drama from Mann, a master of the form (“Heat”), but it is not the epic Mann’s and Depp’s fans were expecting.
Some sloppy storytelling prevents “Public Enemies” from reaching greatness anyway, but what hampers the movie is Mann’s decision to shoot in high definition video. The movie just looks cheap.
Filmmakers have been shooting in video for more than a decade, and its grainy look usually signals guerilla indie productions for better (“Pieces of April”) or worse (“My Date With Drew”). HD can be manipulated, through post-production color correction and other techniques, to simulate the richer, warmer look of film. George Lucas did this with the “Star Wars” prequels and David Fincher with “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”
Mann also did this with his two previous films, “Collateral” (where the video manipulations looked terrific) and “Miami Vice.” But with “Public Enemies” Mann makes no (or very little) attempt to soften HD’s harshness.
Perhaps he means to recapture the spirit of the French New Wave filmmakers he admires, but “Public Enemies” is not small enough for this approach. It is intimate only half the time. The bank robberies and shootouts are staged on a grand scale.
“Public Enemies” looks exactly like what it is, a major motion picture shot with a home video camera (admittedly, a high-end one). The movie screen displaying the film becomes a giant flat screen TV.
Once you get past the cinematography, which isn’t easy, “Public Enemies” is a swift, detailed crime story that picks up many of Mann’s favored themes. In many ways it is a Depression-era retelling of “Heat,” with a cunning lawman and his team pursuing a flamboyant robber and his henchman. The story begins with Dillinger engineering a prison break in Michigan City, Ind., and ends with his famous demise outside Chicago’s Biograph Theater (a sequence shot on the actual location).
While “Public Enemies” does not play up Dillinger as a folk hero, the script (credited to Mann, Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman) portrays him more sympathetically than Purvis. Dillinger is polite, doesn’t use coarse language (“Public Enemy” is remarkable for its lack of swearing), dresses well and is devoted to his girlfriend, Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard, Oscar winner for “La Vie en Rose”). If he didn’t rob banks, Dillinger would be a model citizen.
Purvis is portrayed as an ethical lawman troubled by the increasingly ruthless means he must use against Dillinger. Because these methods include wiretapping and torture, Mann obviously frames “Public Enemy” as a critique of the current war on terror.
As for the past war on Dillinger, Mann’s point of view is the government was using a cannon to take out a fly. A senator in a congressional hearing points out that the pursuit of Dillinger and other bank robbers cost far more than these men ever stole. Another scene stresses that the syndicate led by Al Capone’s heir, Frank Nitti (Bill Camp), skimmed more money on a daily basis than Dillinger scored in his most profitable bank job.
But Dillinger was famous, a fame he pursued, and the ambitious J. Edger Hoover (Billy Crudup) uses the combined celebrity of Dillinger and Purvis (famous for gunning down Pretty Boy Floyd) to browbeat Congress into creating the FBI.
Mann does a poor job introducing and then distinguishing secondary characters, particularly Dillinger’s confederates. Most of them are introduced in the same scene, and good luck telling them apart after that. David Wenham plays one and Steven Dorff plays another. The confusion continues late into the film when you probably will be asking yourself, “Which one of these guys is Baby Face Nelson?”
Bale’s Purvis is a repressed character, much in the way his Bruce Wayne is in the Batman movies. Bale plays tightly wound control freaks well, but here he is no match for Depp’s personality. Depp doesn’t go for showiness as Dillinger. His acting is quiet, thoughtful and even gentle, and is terrific for its naturalism.
Depp’s performance is one of the few aspects of the film not degraded by the HD format. Ideally you either shouldn’t notice a film’s building materials or you should immediately accept them as part of the experience (such as “The Godfather’s” lush cinematography), but the look of “Public Enemies” is a constant distraction. HD is too sharp, too flat and draws our eye to the wrong details (such as Depp’s pierced ears).
Searches of irony will remember that in the 1980s Mann’s “Miami Vice” was one of the first television program that looked as good as a theatrical release thanks to a revolution in lighting equipment. Now, thanks to another technological revolution, he gives us a movie that looks like a TV show, an inexpensive one at that. Progress doesn’t always move forward.