‘Public Enemies’ Opens Everywhere Tomorrow

From what I'm hearing, that's exactly what it does. While I don't care for Mr. Depp's politics, I like how he gets into character.

I think this may be based on the short story "The Death Of Jack Hamilton" by Stephen King – The story does romanticize as it tell the story of Dillinger from the POV of Homer Van Meeter one of Dillinger's gang

Just me, or did anyone else think the trailer's music was strange?

Many of the Depression Era gangsters WERE romantic heroes to the population. As were the "bad men" of earlier eras, Highwaymen, Buccaneers, and Gunfighters for example. Wasn't Sir Francis Drake an English national hero. Ned Kelly? El Cid?

Sort of, but man is the remixed version of Ten Million Slaves cool.

after i hit submit, i had that burning feeling…

Christian Bale. Wow I haven't seen that guy in like 6 weeks. Glad he isn't approaching over saturation or anything.

absolutley stunning trailer; visually breathtaking. Mann can shoot film, and the copious use of deep focus really makes the period detail come alive…

Now, if he can tell a cogent and entertaining story as well we will be most pleased…

"smirking crook versus a grim unlikeable G-Man is not a plot"

No, it's not. It's a short summary. But that's like saying "Heat" is going to be a cops-and-robbers film, and cops-and-robbers isn't a plot, before having seen it. Turns out, it did have a plot. A rather involved one. I'm sure this will have one too. Certainly Dillinger's life had natural "turns" to it, with rising and falling action and a big climax.

He did play Dillinger in a movie back in the early to mid 1970's, I'm almost certain.

This is my kind of movie. Johnny Depp is a great actor. It might be fun to compare this one to Bonnie and Clyde, one of my all time favorite films. There is no question this will romanticize dangerous criminals, but that is fairly standard practice for this kind of movie. The only remedy is to make sure to re-watch Kevin Costner as Elliot Ness as sort of a counterbalance.

I realize it's very popular in movies to romanticize the bad guy, but I'd like to see something different for a change. The likable bad guy is something of a cliche at this point. Personally, I find it hard to sympathize with Dillinger the cop killer. I'm funny that way.

From this preview, it looks like Public Enemies will be 'Pre-HEAT' — very similar in key elements, but set decades earlier than HEAT: a structure of twin, parallel plots: the crime spree and the police hunt,
with the charismatic crime leader being doomed by his inability to walk away from his lady love…

Let's hope no one in this one says "Life is short. Time is luck." That would make 3 films MM put it in,
and repetition starts to look like groan-inducing inadvertent self-parody.

Also I hope this new film will avoid the big flaw of HEAT: getting bogged down in slow, semi-documentary looks at the plodding process of preparing for the crimes, and too many redundant subplots (w/extra characters).

That being said, HEAT is a great film, rewarding countless repeat viewings
(a great way to gauge a film's quality),
and I'm hopeful that Public Enemies will be a good piece of cinematic narrative tour de force.

Movies & TV shows which admire criminals (whether or not the show pretends otherwise) are repellant to me — especially when the criminals are so thuggish and complacently ignorant and uncultured (The Sopranos, or anything by Tarantino) — to the extent of being self-admiring for being content with uncultured ignorance …
It's depressing to see so many good people (everywhere I look) happily thrilling to the rotten actions and primitive lives of all these criminals on the screen. The psychology of this phenomenon is intriguing, isn't it?

Perhaps our culture doesn't provide adequate (daily) outlets for anger & aggression.
We tend to 'bottle up' too much inside, walking around ready to over-react to small stuff.
Perhaps we are too prone to anger because we are so pressured to make life live up to excessive expectations
(due to brainwashing from relentless bombardment of advertising and pop culture pushing shallow values).

Having seen Public Enemies I think it has a great deal going for it. Mann eschews political correctness and portrays the stronger moral code (of those times) without trying to soften it. This gives the good versus bad dynamic a supercharge that makes for some really violent but gripping action scenes. Also this is Michael Mann at his story-telling best. The plot is shackled by the truth of history, and as a consequence Public Enemies has great pacing and is very tightly scripted. The alpha male versus alpha male story works because Melvin Purvis is clearly good and working for the forces of good. There is sufficient distance between him and Depp to make this a really interesting character study. Read my full review here: http://www.whatmakesaman.net/wordpress/2009/06/30...

As a someone who enjoys Mann's films I think this one of his best, if not the best. Less flash, more substance.

The music towards the end is from the Ed Norton/Spike Lee movie 25th Hour.

You should review trailers! Better yet, you should judge books by their covers!!

Despite what is on line and what is show now, I think mr. d's killing was pretty hilarious from what I saw long ago and I hope to see it reproduced on this Five hour movie by Mr. Mann. He does love his Over saturated flicks and perhaps it's just me feeling that.

Three bullets went into mr. d, but the killing one was -again- Hilarious! It goes into his butt; bounces off a clavicle into the rib cage, thru the neck to bounce off the inside skull and exiting out an eye socket… Comic Gold for the end of a filthy scumbag.

Sadly, I believe hollyweird will do the slooooooooo…..ooooow motion death scene that's so popular now. Topped off with fiddles and moaning in agony ladies as mr. d drops to the ground.

"That being said, HEAT is a great film, rewarding countless repeat viewings"

I agree. maybe it's because I originally saw it when I was 13, but upo first viewing I was confused and mildly bored by the "redundant subplots" and extra characters. Did we really need the psycho, Jack-the-Ripper Nazi-Cowboy? Natalie Portman's breakdown? Dennis Haysbert as a struggling ex-con? Jon Voight as a gentle mentor with skin cancer? Ashley Judd banging the voice of Chief Wiggum?

On repeat viewings, YES. They all work so wonderfully well. With the exception of the weasely character who employed Henry Rollins (?) and tried to steal his money back. He served a genuine purpose in the plot (leading to DeNiro's downfall), but was uninspiring as a character. It wasn't exactly "War and Peace," but it was deeper than your average action flick.

By the way, don't know what you mean by the plodding process of preparing for the crime. I remember there being a lot of time between jobs, but I don't remember it being a procedural film, on neither the cop nor the robber side. There were a lot of details, but I didn't find it plodding.

All crime dramas are huilty of revelling in sin for the vicarious pleasure of the audience. Which may or may not be morally suspect. Depends on the counter-balance and the overall intent of the author. When it comes to "Paradise Lost," I'll give it a slide, since even though Satan is by far the most interesting character, we know for sure Milton wasn't on his side.

When it comes to fare like "The Sopranos," I don't feel the couterbalance. Bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people, bad things happen to bad people, and good things happen to good people. Which would be okay–it's like life itself–except it doesn't make up for the fact that we are mostly tuning in to watch people be brutalized. At least most of the characters live in perpetual gloom. I wish Tony had been punished in the finale, like Michael Chiklis was in "The Shield".

I prefer stuff like "The Godfather" and "Breaking Bad," where the unintended consequences are obvious and unmistakable.

Just saw this. It doesn't romanticize or demonize anyone really, it's almost like a straight up historical recreation. There were some decent parts but overall I thought it was kind of bland and overly melodramatic in the wrong spots. I also thought a lot more of the interesting historical details were glossed over or left out.

Jhoh, You say it's almost like a straight up historical recreation where… "a lot more of the interesting historical details were glossed over or left out"?
Well, I'll take your suggestion that it doesn't romanticize with a grain of salt.

"Well, I'll take your suggestion that it doesn't romanticize with a grain of salt."

To say that a movie omits or glosses over historical facts is not to imply that it makes either Dillinger or Pervis more romatic than they ought to be. You can leave details out for any number of reasons. Because they don't fit the characterization you've chosen to portray. Becuase there isn't enough time. To preserve the internal consistency of the plot. Writers/directors have to have discretion. The constraints of storytelling, and movie storytelling in particular, demand so. This is fiction, after all, not a documentary.

[cont.]
The problem is that the source material is *not* the John Dillinger story. It''s fundamentally the story of a bunch of young lawyers sitting out the Depression with secure government employment, who suddenly found themselves involved in car chases and gunfights. That's actually a more interesting story and I wish more attention was devoted to it. The problem isn't with Dillinger, it's with Purvis. There's also a rather strange omission from the Little Bohemia sequence that strikes me as slightly perverse.
[cont.]

Your comments are so interesting I just want to read MORE from you – seriously.
Do you write much in other forums?

Please tell me what exactly was the "rather strange omission from the Little Bohemia sequence" ??
Just a few days ago I finally saw the Warren Oates film about Dillinger (for the first time),
so I have some notion of what the Little Bohemia sequence entails …

Just back from.

It mirrors the parallel cop/robber structure of Heat, with somewhat less focus on the cop procedural part than I'd have liked. The glimpses of the nascent arts of "scientific" crimefighting, including wiretaps and CI's, were fascinating. Thankfully we are not tortured with endless scenes of Melvin Purvis's family life; there is only the terse title card at the end of the film, telling of his ultimate fate, that hints at more than professional turmoil in his life.

The thing I appreciate most about Michael Mann's films is also the thing that dooms him to perennial box-office failure: he does a minimal amount of hand-holding for the audience. He trusts the script and the actors to convey a tangled and complex plot with a myriad of characters both major and minor; he trusts the audience to keep track of multiple threads without constantly reminding them of who's who and what's what. Once a plot point is established, whether by a murmur or a glance or an establishing shot, he does not feel the need to revisit the facts until the characters do so organically and logically. There's precious little "As you know, Bob"-style expository dialogue — Michael Mann could never direct an episode of "24"; his artistic integrity would explode. Yet without such audience crutches, his films are often thought of as "brooding" or sterile or austere or incomprehesible. Brooding and austere they may be, but I think of this as a strength, not a weakness. The vast majority of filmgoers out for a couple of brainless hours in an air-conditioned theater may not agree with me or other Mann-fans on that point. (For example, I'm the only person I know who LOVED Miami Vice. Maybe there's something wrong with me but I find new things to admire every time I watch it.)

Then there's Mann's approach to action scenes. Violence in Mann films (and Public Enemies is emblematic in this regard) comes on like a thunderstorm rolling up a valley: He tends to start off with wide angles and deep focus as the first shots rattle like stones thrown against sheet-metal, then plunge into close-up, tightly focused shots of individuals struggling to survive as bullets smack around them or into them. Firefights degenerate into confused melees of strobing muzzle flashes and fragments of glass and masonry, in which survival and victory are more a product of luck and one side making fewer mistakes than the other.

Public Enemies is very much a Michael Mann film, and that is a very good thing.

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