Public Enemies, a story about John Dillinger, recreates the 1930s admirably, but also takes a shot at recreating its movies.  It's a complicated love affair this film is spinning, because it's trying to be true to the lives of its major characters, but it's also working on the aspects of their lives that aren't exactly real.

It's a curious time and position to find yourself in really, and one in which reality was sort of up for grabs.  Gangsters, movies, movies about gangsters, cars, machine guns, the FBI, and countless other things you heard about on the radio were all new ideas, and everyone was pretty much pretending they knew what the hell was going on.

Real gangsters and movie gangsters were equally creating themselves out of mythos and theory, and fed off a certain approval of the way the other looked.  Outlaws and lawmen of the higher order were fairly unsure of each other and what they were supposed to be doing exactly.  John Dillinger, though he could plan the hell out of a bank robbery, was just sort of generally stealing and running.  Melvin Purvis and the men he led, though armed with a lot of tactics, were just sort of generally chasing him.

The film feels like the '30s (I'll pretend I know), and that's a lot more impressive than looking like them.  A lot of movies take place in the '30s, but they don't deliver the air about them like a movie set in the '30s and made in the '30s.  Public Enemies shows you part of such a film, the one Dillinger watched the night he died, and says to you, "See what I'm saying?"  And, you do.

This is a movie that also benefits greatly from the fact that it is part of the dialog of Michael Mann's best work.  Mann can go strange at times, and sometimes he's interested in things that quite frankly don't need films at all, but when he's on his game he makes things like Last of the Mohicans and Ali.  Most telling, for this case, he makes Manhunter, not Silence of the Lambs.

Johnny Depp plays Dillinger as he really was (by all accounts), a man who was mostly lost, and generally pissed at the system that locked him up for ten years because he stole fifty bucks.  A guy who, for the most part, grew up in prison at a time when there was a sort of honor among thieves, and robbed banks because it was something he could make sense of.

Christian Bale plays Purvis to perfection, and though it may not seem like it, it's a demanding role.  He's got a lot less to work with, and nevertheless pulls off the key to the film... that the two men are a lot more alike than they are different.  Also somewhat lost in his place and position, similarly because it was being defined around and at him, and changed as he went along, Purvis is likewise just playing out what seems to make sense in the midst of a generality that doesn't.

You've got to like a film with a decent budget and a couple of hot names that nevertheless delivers the reigned-in viewpoint of a documentary.  That's made even better when the bold and brash Dillinger can be made real when the reality can hardly be mentioned without sounding glorified.  He introduced himself to women as a bank robber and sauntered into the Dillinger task force office to have a look around.  That's just who he was.  But, try saying it without implying he was pretty cool.

Rating: ★★★★☆ 

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