If realistic shooting scenes, action-packed jailbreaks and romantic dialogue (Johnny Depp with sleek pickup lines) are your thing,Public Enemies has to be your number one choice for July.

The 12th film directed by Michael Mann (whose other notable works include The Insider and The Aviator), Public Enemies is a film that will have you glued to the screen, from the exciting first scene when John Dilinger, portrayed by Johnny Depp, orchestrated a jailbreak for his buddies.

Based on the true story of 1930s bank robber John Herbert Dilinger, it follows his trail of unlawful activities as he broke into banks, broke out of jails, and also his brief relationship with Billie Frechette, played by Oscar-winner for Best Actress Marion Cotillard.

The development of characters John Dilinger and his nemesis FBI agent Melvin Purvis is very prominent in the movie. From the word go, John Dilinger displays loyalty to his friends, a bunch of bank robbers, by putting himself  as a human shield between them and the prison guards trying to shoot them. It starts off with a fantasy-kind of setting: as if John Dilinger was Robin Hood, robbing banks in broad daylight but actually refusing to take money from a bank customer when he said “We’re here for the bank’s money, not yours. Put it away.”

As the film progresses, you see more of Dilinger’s character. Underneath a criminal’s face is a hero’s heart; he tries not to kill authorities unless necessary. He also cares a lot about his public image, and it works, because the people idolise him. When he was arrested, the reporters were interviewing him to find out more about him, rather than questioning the cops on the tedious process of apprehending him. It helps that he gives quotable quotes too. When asked how long he takes to go through a bank, he replied “Well… 1 minute and 40 seconds. Flat.”

As Dilinger, Depp’s lines are short but sweet, delivering impact to the audience. Every line seems so profound and philosophical, it’s nothing you’d actually expect a famous robber to utter. Another example is when he told a guy, who was delaying the opening of the bank vault for the police to arrive sooner, to either “be a dead hero or a live coward”. The arrogant, possessive boyfriend that Dilinger is will garner your sympathy as he faces betrayals by those close to him and deaths of those he cares about, till the very end. We’ve come to expect nothing short of another fine portrayal from Depp, following his winning of the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy in 2007 for his role as Benjamin Barker in musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and also Favourite Comedic Performance at MTV Movie Awards 2008 for being Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean.

Christian Bale, fresh from being John Conner in Termination Salvation and Batman in The Dark Knight, also delivers a stunning performance with his role of Purvis. An expert shot, shown when he nailed a fast-escaping Pretty Boy Floyd (Channing Tatum) at a distance of at least 100m, Bale delivers a performance that lets the pain of a man, who must be equally ruthless to capture equally cold-blooded criminals, radiate out and touch the audience.

What is unsatisfying about the film is the imbalanced development of the other characters. Billie Frechette was such a nasty character that there was no reason to include her on screen next to Dilinger. Channing had at most 2 minutes of screen time. Billy Crudup, who played the role of FBI’s first director J. Edgar Hoover, was unable to display his character’s crucial role as a person who introduced important changes to the FBI, such as having the largest compilation of fingerprints, which transformed the FBI into a powerful agency.

The romance is almost one-sided and not covered in-depth. This is historically true, as she’d met Dilinger in November 1933 and was arrested during April 1934 for harboring a criminal. The romance seems out of place, as it was mostly Dilinger chasing after Frechette, and was uninteresting to the audience.

If you’re looking for a film with badass shooting scenes, with characters running about and dodging bullets by a hair’s breadth, you won’t find them here. Instead, what you get is shooting at its finest – FBI agents and criminals using topographic features in the area to the limit, such as hiding behind trees or using a car as cover.

The lighting is also great – the bank robbery scenes are brightly illuminated, showing how the hero and his gang steal from them in broad daylight. It also accurately conveys how dark and tumultuous the Great Depression era was.

Overall, I’d say that the action makes Public Enemies worth watching. Despite the acting talents that were buried, Johnny Depp and Christian Bale managed to deliver.

Rating: 8.5/10

Release date: July 23

Rating: NC16 (Some violence)

Genre Action/Adventure

Runtime: 140 mins

Starring: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard

Director: Michael Mann

Image from here.