The whole is only as good as the sum of its parts, or at least that is suppose to be the case. In Michael Mann's Public Enemies (2009) it seems the opposite might be true; the sum of its parts are better than the whole. There were some great individual sequences in this movie that I could analyze and watch again and again but the complete film was lacking a clear direction and story.
Lets start with what Michael Mann gets right and it is what he always gets right, the shootouts. He is the master of realistic, suspenseful gun play. His gritty digital look (we will get back to this) and sound, work well to evoke the chaos, and testosterone involved in these spectacles. Again some of these scenes immediately made me want re-watch them, then rob a bank in the 1930's. I want to make it clear that these shootout/escape scenes are not just good for there thrills but Mann turns them into a work of art by crafting realism and suspense. Mann book-ends these scenes by getting his camera in close and concentrates on these great shots of eyes and faces. One great scene akin to this is in the beginning as Dillinger holds a comrade from a moving car as he slowly dies, the camera is so intimate we feel like we are the ones holding on for dear life.
The casting of Johnny Depp was another good decision by Mann. He is the only reason we wanted to root for Dillinger. Without Depp I would have been totally lost as to why I care about what's going on in this character, because the film nor the writing doesn't offer any real insight into who Dillinger was as a person.
I can sum up where the movie went wrong pretty simply; I wasn't invested in the story. I appreciate Mann's attempts to give us no exposition and just throw us into the life of John Dillinger but it had no focus and seemed to be caught between characters and tone. As I mentioned earlier his digital gritty camera worked well for the action scenes but it also provoked a sense of coldness or distance from the characters and story. It served one aspect well but the more important aspect (story) was hurt by it. This was also due to the indecisiveness of tone, Mann couldn't decide if he wanted a gritty 30's gangster movie, or a polished Hollywood Gangster Picture, as evident by the displaced swelling score and love story. Also, the film went back and forth between Dillinger and Pervis (played with difficulty by Bale) and at one point seemed to totally shift our perspective of who we are suppose to be routing for. Let me point out that I don't think Mann ever really wanted us to care for one character more than another, he was just trying to show us two men that are good at there chosen professions and how the story played out between them. He did this with much more success in Collateral (my favorite Michael Mann film), with a clear protagonist and antagonist.
If Mann had just been able to cut the running time down and decide his tone or mood, the movie has its great moments and would have been much more relatable. Despite its flaws I already have a desire to watch it again, and that is how you know you are in the hands of a good filmmaker.
***
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