Brilliant. Public Enemies was totally brilliant. Not Einstein brilliant, but certainly brilliant like that kid in your High School Chemistry class who got a perfect score on the final, always beat you on the homework, and his experiments at the next table were always better than yours and you always looked even worse by comparison so you ended up getting a goddamn C in the class… I hated that kid. But I loved this movie.

One of the greatest assets of Public Enemies is that Director Michael Mann totally humanizes the legend of John Dillinger. The film is very under-dramatic at times, but in a lot of ways this makes it much more palpable for the audience. This movie is totally devoid of big explosions, cheesy heroic lines, and Hollywood bimbos, and that is what makes it so gripping. The action sequences almost seemed as if they were clips from a recreation in a history documentary that you would watch on the History Channel (that is if you watch the History Channel). Which was surprisingly awesome, the shootouts were amazingly gritty, exciting and held me on the edge of my seat until the last bullet was fired.

The performances are all really clean and seem very honest. Christian Bale finally returns to old form (probably with the help of Mann) and doesn’t “grr” his way through the movie. In fact I’m pretty sure his talking lion impression never makes an appearance throughout the entire movie. His character shows strength through action, not strength through sounding “badass.” Marion Cotillard (Big Fish, La Môme) gives a really beautiful performance as Billie Frechette, Dillinger’s love interest. And then a surprise performance from Stephen Graham who you might know better as Tommy from the movie Snatch (if you haven’t seen Snatch, you need to go out and rent it right now, it is like a badass and fuck-styrical sandwich on awesome bread). He plays Baby Face Nelson a psychotic bastard with a penchant for killing people and robbing banks…it’s sweet.

And then there is Depp. Now I might be a little biased because I freaking love Johnny Depp, but he absolutely nails this role. The delivery of every single one of his lines is nearly flawless, everything feels so natural when he is on screen. His performance is wonderfully subdued and allows you to really see Dillinger as opposed to some sort of caricature of him. He absolutely pulls off every second of the quiet badass, with balls as big as watermelons. Dillinger is rumored to have had an absolutely mammoth dick and Depp seems to capture every bit of confidence that certain attribute would instill. Depp even nails the famous Dillinger smirk. In my opinion the movie may be worth seeing simply for Depp’s performance.

I only really have two complaints about the film. My first complaint is the sound, it struck me as incredibly unbalanced with some of the guns sounding like cannons and others sounding kind of like those Fourth of July poppers. And then, I think due to filming it in HD, some of the shots give you this strange unsettling feeling, and not in the good way. More in the sort of there is something wrong here and I can’t quite put my finger on it way. Like when you can’t solve one of those god damn puzzles that make you find the differences between two pictures.

The greatest achievement of this film is its ability to create enormous levels of excitement and intensity while remaining very grounded and realistic; which I credit to wonderful acting, top directing, and a superb crew. There were moments in this film where I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until I heard everyone in the theater take in a gasp of air. It also has what is probably the greatest traffic light of any film I have ever seen. When all is said and done this is easily one of the best and most exciting films that I have seen all year, and is definitely worth your pocket money. So hold off on buying that new deck of Pokémon cards that you’ve been eyeing, and Aaron Burr a Hamilton on Public Enemies instead.

-Sam “Considered Robbing a Bank Last Night” Reeder


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