Public Enemies

Directed by Michael Mann

(R)

***

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The final days of Public Enemy No. 1, John Dillinger.

Public Enemies is a “straight-laced, no-nonsense, shoot-’em-up” gangster movie, said Dan Zak in The Washington Post. The real-life escapades­ of John Dillinger—the in­famous bank robber who was shot down in 1934—seem made for director Michael Mann. But the man behind Miami Vice and Heat tells the story in perfunctory fashion. Focusing on the fugitive’s final months, Mann switches between the exploits of Dillinger (Johnny Depp) and the efforts of J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) and Agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) to capture him. As a chronicle of the parallel rise of celebrity criminals and the FBI, it’s fascinating history, said Keith Phipps in The Onion. But Mann’s telling­ “feels disappointingly smaller than life.” Instead of delving­ into Dillinger’s delusional psyche, he “reduces a legendary game” of cops and robbers to the “size of a standard police procedural.” Mann has never been one for psycho­logical realism, said Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune. People go to his movies for the “sleek, threatening glamour of crime and punish­ment,” and that’s what he delivers here.