Public Enemas. Lol

In the vacuum of gangster drama, no one can hear you emote.

The above title is irony. Public Enemies will not make you shit yourself. It is also not a shitty movie. But, given the expectations of the summer action blockbuster that has permeated most of American mid-year film culture, you will leave the theater flushed out of over-CGI and girls in skimpy clothes, cagey one-liners spilled from actors’ mouths like burnt popcorn on the stove, perhaps disappointed in what you’ve seen after your high wears off and you realize that smoking weed actually made the movie worse. Then, perhaps, you will stop going to see shitty summer movies like Transformers 2 and maybe go to the alternative cinema, emboldened by PE’s promises of artistic transcendence. You will have had a filmic public enema while watching Public Enemies. Lol

Public Enemies is a 2 and a half hour experiment in mainstream gangster fiction because Michael Mann didn’t want to make a movie that would be compared to The Godfather, or worse, something like American Gangster. It looks murky, shot in digital format and not actual film. The cinematography is choppy, taking place behind trees and hidden by staircases. There’s star power – Johnny Depp acting as gasp, a jovial and wacky dude, and Christian Bale grunting a lot – but no one-liners or typical narrative build-up. The scenes swirl, lacking a clear thread or arc for the characters to grab ahold of – by the end, the sinking feeling is that there isn’t any higher meaning to the bank robberies committed by John Dillinger, or typical Hollywood platitudes. There’s just crime and violence.

As I was watching the movie, I hated it – I mean, really hated it. I fell asleep around 30 minutes in, completely bored by the formless bloff on screen as Johnny Depp strolled around with his Johnny Depp grin and some people were killed, although why they mattered I wasn’t sure. I woke up to the ugly ass digital format staining my eyes – an aesthetic choice akin to scrubbing your eyes with bleach – and kept checking the time to see if this 150-minute adventure into gangster minutiae would finally end. I scoffed at Bale’s incessant gruffness; I laughed at Marion Cotillard’s half-in-half-out American accent; I wondered if Billy Crudup’s bit role as J. Edgar Hoover would have been better if he was glowing blue and showing his dick. When I walked out of the theater, I was asked what I thought. “What a fucking waste,” I grunted, not in sarcastic snark but in the disappointment that I had just spent my afternoon watching “that bullshit.” Then I went to a burger joint and watched a fat man endlessly scoop peanuts out of a free box full of them into his palm. This did not seem like a 4th of July worth remembering.

The lesson of course is that I am an idiot. Public Enemies is not a bad movie because I fell asleep, nor is it a great one because I can read reviews bemoaning the lack of action and think, Well, it’s an art film! It’s a daring take on gangster formula, because Michael Mann was handed a huge budget, two of Hollywood’s biggest stars, a 4th of July opening weekend, and decided to use the time to troll any family intent on seeing a fun summer blockbuster in between bouts of grilling. I have to respect the obvious middle finger to convention. It’s also a major let down, because for all of Mann’s lyrical musings on the existential squalor of actually being a cop or a robber (or both, if you’re a Chicago cop), the movie doesn’t go anywhere. All of the characters are cold (except Cotillard’s weeping wife) and never learn anything; the robbers are slowly mowed down as the war on crime escalates, and the cops get more and more ruthless in their attempts to apprehend Dillinger. Is Dillinger aware of the ultimate mundanity of his life, how hollow his good living is? Maybe, but he will keep living anyways. He must have known he would be gunned down at the Biograph Theater (only 20 minutes from my house in Chicago!) when he went to the movies with his friends, but he didn’t give no fuck about it.

Cotillard is the only character worthy of audience empathy; it’s too bad Mann felt the need to drag it out from viewers by having her get beat up in a harsh interrogation scene (Those jerks! you say from your seat). If you feel bad for Dillinger, just an honest man trying to make a dishonest living, then keep your sympathy to yourself – Depp’s character, bereft of all emotions but love, doesn’t need your tears or your companionship. One gets the idea that he goes through life collecting acquaintances not because of the need for friendship but for routine. He goes to the movies because he needs something to do; he shoots a man responsible for his partner’s death ouf of principle; he works with criminals like Baby Face Nelson not because he likes them but because they’re good at what they do. General morality is no concern to Dillinger; just his own personal sense of right and wrong.

Seeing Public Enemy is more recommended than seeing Public Enemies.

The obvious connection I can make is the recent The Assassination of the Outlaw Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford Who Totally Shot Him In The Back, Isn’t That Fuckin’ Wack? starring Brad “I Can Act” Pitt and Casey “I Want to Act Soooo Badly” Affleck, a film with similar musings on the harshness of criminality, buoyed by idyllic cinematography on the frontiers of America and way more connectable characters than this one. I mean, even if you hated Affleck’s sniveling Ford or Pitt’s brash, rude James, they at least make you feel; the biggest crime about Public Enemies is that too many of the characters don’t even seem to matter. Why invest an opinion in any character that doesn’t even seem important in the context of their own film? The success at empathy, aided by a not-so-subtle narration track and of course, that beeyooooooootiful photography, is what made TAOFOJJBYCRFWTSHITBITFW? a minor success in the Oscar-bloated field of 2007. The lack of empathy in such a plot & character-driven movie (cause Mann sure ain’t showing you the beautiful scenery with the washed out shitty digital filming) is what sinks Public Enemies just a bit.

One thing is totally awesome about the movie, no questions asked: The sound. Mann’s the guy who directed Heat and that show about the gay cops in Miami, so you better believe he knows how to make gunshots pop out from the theater sound system like they’re right behind you. A friend of mine once told me about how the audio for the gun fights in Heat had been recorded in a vacuum using actual firearms, so that the ring and slug of every bullet could be perfectly called up in film for chilling effect and maybe he did the same thing for PE,  for these are not a typical shoot-happy scenes. In the theater, you feel like you are being shot at, at least, like a nearby spectator in the mayhem.

Eventually, the feeling seeps in that you are just a spectator to everything; there’s no understanding any of the characters, their motivations, or why anything in the movie happens. It simply happens in a perpetual state of in medias res. Even when the movie ends, the final emotion is of an unfinished story, a promise never delivered to the character in it, and just the same, the audience. Public Enemies is as worthwhile of a movie you’ll see in a big theater this summer; just don’t expect to fall in love with it. In the movie, all love leads to is death.