Public Enemies: Why So Serious?

By Katharine Eastvold, Guest Reviewer

Katharine Eastvold lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with her husband and three children under the age of five. She holds a B.A. in political science from Princeton University.

Public Enemies is one of those movies in which the good guy is actually the bad guy – and vice versa. John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) is a flamboyant and likeable Depression-era bank robber, and Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), the federal agent pursuing him, espouses a troubling approach to law enforcement, one that blurs the line between the law and the outlaws. Purvis is somewhat sympathetic but lacks charm (a cardinal sin in this film), and Dillinger is supposed to be sympathetic throughout, even when he offs those who stand in his way without a bit of hand-wringing. We don’t know them; we think we know Dillinger.

Except we don’t. The problem is that we have no clear reason (other than the powerful persuasion of good acting and cinematography) to like or pity Dillinger. If he has a motivation for robbing banks other than to amass enough cash to retire to Venezuela, we don’t hear about it. Sure, he makes a point of handing customers back their money during his heists, but that, like most of his behavior, seems to be mere showmanship (not to mention good public relations). Unlike the ordinary people who shelter him, he appears unconcerned with economic justice for the poor, sticking it to the fat cats, or any other motive that might possibly be tinged with nobility.

But since this is Johnny Depp playing the bad guy, I found myself – impossibly – wanting him to succeed, feeling that after all the trouble the government had given him, surely he deserved a quiet life on a beach with his girl. Yes, Depp is that good.

It’s not as though he doesn’t ever behave admirably. He does (eventually) keep his promise to come back for Billie, his long-suffering girlfriend (Marion Cotillard), and he’s loyal to (some of) his pals. But, by his own admission, he lives for today and doesn’t worry about tomorrow. It’s hard to be a reliable friend when you can’t see past the next shoot-out. In the end, we’re as ignorant of his motivation and principles as he is.

Public Enemies suffers from not picking a genre and sticking with it. It’s not a biopic of John Dillinger, because it reveals virtually nothing about his earlier life. It would be a good action film if it were thirty minutes shorter and did a better job of building suspense. It makes for a poor love story, since the relationship between John and Billie is barely explored; usually after they’re together for a minute or so, someone starts shooting, and people start running, and that’s that. There’s precious little in the way of comic relief, and every time I laughed, I felt guilty about it. It’s a movie that takes itself so seriously that it really ought to have some sort of message.

If it does have a message, it’s not found in Dillinger, who operates by his own rules and uses his charms to throw up a smokescreen in front of his friends and his audience. I actually found the film most interesting when it focused on J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) and his efforts to build a federal crime-fighting machine. At one point, Hoover orders Purvis to round up all of Dillinger’s family and associates and show no mercy. Purvis presides over one session in which a wounded man is denied treatment or anesthesia until he reveals Dillinger’s whereabouts, but when he later finds his men abusing Billie, he puts a stop to the interrogation. He may be a southern gentleman at heart, but we never find out whether he changed his mind about “scientific” crime-fighting methods, or if he just has a soft spot for young women in trouble. Political morality is yet one more topic that this film touches on but isn’t about.

I would have liked to see Public Enemies make up its mind and do one thing well. Slimmed down and stripped of some of the many very similar shoot-out scenes and a lot of long, angst-filled close-ups, it could have made a good Depression-era Catch Me If You Can. As Carissa (who would be writing this if she hadn’t so generously let me take a crack at it) said, “I was wanting it to be The Fugitive, only with better hats.”

Alternatively, the film could have delved deeply into the character of John Dillinger, showing us the hows and whys of his life of crime and maybe exploring the implications and ultimate tragedy of his “live for today” mentality. As a Christian, I was repulsed by the conclusion the film seems to draw: that it’s just a crying shame John and Billie never got to spend their ill-gotten but hard-won loot in South America, but, hey – that’s life.