Public Enemies

Honest to God, I wish I was Johnny Depp. The man is just an amazing actor. Every role he gets becomes another masterpiece that everyone enjoys. I even loved him in Pirates 2 and 3 (even if the movies made me want to gouge my eyes out with bear traps).

Public Enemies is no exception. It is hands down one of the best films of the summer and from what I hear is already slated to be in the running for Oscar season.

So, here's the story, John Dillinger (Depp) is a notorious anti-hero bank robber who is loved by the American people. Dillinger is taking money away from banks during a time when most people are blaming the banks for bringing on the Depression (also known as the "emo" era). Dillinger and men like Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson have free reign while the cops can't seem to do anything about it. In comes special agent Melvin Purvis (Bale), sent by FBI
director J. Edgar Hoover to arrest and/or kill all evildoers. While Dillinger discovers that his once booming lifestyle is slowly fading away and becoming obsolete, Purvis finds that to catch criminals like Dillinger, he and his team will have to resort to brutal methods to bring them in.

Johnny Depp again shows us that he is an amazing actor, while Christian Bale shows us that he is still an actor. If this movie is remembered for anything it should be remembered for its stunning realism. the whole film has a documentary style filming to it. Every scene feels like they placed cameras during the time period and just started filming. Every gunshot is particularly brutal. They are the loudest gunshots I've ever heard in a movie and it will make you jump in your seat. Action shots usually involve shaky cameras as the cameramen chase the actors through intense shootouts. Director Michael Mann is basically saying, "this is what happened, this is how Dillinger lived, deal with it." The author of the book the movie is based on even claimed that this was, "The most accurate film Hollywood has ever made." Public Enemies is definitly a film you should see in theatres.

Side note: Dillingers love interest is just awful, just god awful. and she looks like Katy Perry so thats like a double awful whammy.

Grade: B+

-Christopher O'Connell