Public Enemies Movie Reviews

How many times has Hollywood revelled in the gangster film? Countless times, with almost every notable actor having tried his hand at essaying the Bonnie and Clyde fable or the Scarface anti-heroics. And yet, there are still some directors who manage to reinvent the genre, even though the gangster hero's dalliance with crime and his cat-and-mouse brush with the law is something you've seen before. Director Michael Mann's one such auteur

Public Enemies directed by Michael Mann is a sprawling period piece, a crime drama set in the 30s-era of gangsters and lawmen, and it stars Johnny Depp as Robin Hood-style legendary bank robber John Dillinger. The film blends a lot of fact and a bit of fantasy to tell the story of Dillinger who robbed the rich and occasionally gave to the poor, eventually emerging as a larger-than-life folk hero whom the feds swung into action to capture.

This much we should know by now -- all motion pictures are make-believe; even those that purport to be based on real-life events. And the entire mechanism of a film production is geared towards building the safest environment for the actors to perform in so that the illusion is maintained. Depending upon how successful the performers have been in disappearing into their characters, the audience is captivated (or turned off) by the story onscreen.