Public Enemies Review

"Public Enemies" proves two things: the first being that, no surprise, Johnny Depp is a grade A actor and, second, he might bring back hats for men!

I might wind up being in the minority but I found this to be a long, boring film with the most annoying, many times very confusing and certainlyunnecessary, camera shots. The camera is used for every angle from looking up from the floor to looking down from the sky or ceiling. There are shots of car vents, all parts of rifles, dark chases through woods and various criminals and FBI agents to the point that you don't know which is which.

One of the biggest problems I had was, knowing how John Dillinger died, so many scenes that might lead to his capture or death have no meaning or suspense. Also, based on a real person told in reel life it is hard to know what is true and what is false, in particular two scenes where it is hard to believe no one recognized this very well know man whose face is on Wanted Posters all over the country.

Aside from Depp a couple of other good features are the sound track of many Billie Holiday songs and presenting Diana Krall as a night club singer who does "Bye Bye Blackbird". Having never seen or heard Krall I was glad to have this opportunity to do both.

I was extremely impressed with Marion Cotillard who won the Oscar for playing the role of Edith Piaf in "Le Vie En Rose" and was looking forward to seeing her in another picture and she comes through in her role as Dillinger's girlfriend in this film. Her strength comes from her individual scenes, especially towards the end, not from her scenes with Depp.

There are good performances from good actors like Billy Crudup, Cristian Bale, just to mention two, but there is very little drama and all the machine gunning and killing becomes common place even with the crazy camera work so they tend to get monotonous.

Bottom line? It will probably make many millions at the box office this holiday weekend but I can't/won't recommend it.