Yikes!

At any rate, Tyler is wrong as Miami Vice looked marvelous, and for once made me think Digitial could be a viable option, at least in select situations.

I was exaggerating for effect, as usual, as some shots in Miami Vice are great, but really, a lot of the digital material looked like it was shot at 60 frames and deinterlaced, and the blacks were milky as hell. The DOF manipulation was great, as usual, so at least they nailed that. But it did look a good sight worse than the work in Collateral, for some bizarre reason.

When Mantle's work has digital noise and artifacts, it fits, and at least he had the excuse of using hot-off-the-shelf material and doing his best with it on say Slumdog Millionaire. They tested the hell out of the scenes at the studio, and he saw the flaws in it later considering he used HD on very tight shots. Beebe/Mann were using Thomson Viper, as they did on Collateral. Fincher did some great work on it just a few months later than Miami Vice with Zodiac, I thought. Didn't look like either film or digital.

Public Enemy isn't a bad film by any strech. The HD didn't really bother me as much as the overuse of shaky cam in the beginning scenes. Tripods are our friends Hollywood!

The biggest sin of the film isn't a technical aspect but with its screenplay. I didn't care about any of the characters. Not the heroes, not the villians, not the people caught in the crossfire. The various storylines from Purvis dealing with Hoover, to Dillinger's crime spree and his relationship with
Billie (what, they couldn't find any actual half injins!). None of it engaged me. All very cold and distant.

Still, when it crackles and pop, it's great. But that's expected at this point from Mann. I wanted more.

I hear it's intended to come across as cold. I'll tell you in three hours, or tomorrow morning if I'm tired...

Also following 2005's King Kong, a moratorium should have been played on "Bye Bye Blackbird." That song can never be used as effectively as it was in KK. So don't even try.

Using another Mann film as an example, I though Heat was pretty cold too. But the shootouts are so incredible, you don't sweat the screenplay and character development.

Having seen it, I think it works quite a bit better than Heat, actually. At least it's a half hour shorter and doesn't focus on the poorly-realized human factor so much (though yeah, Marion Cotillard is useless until she gets smacked around). As an almost Fincher-like steely look at the whole Dillinger myth, it's quite entertaining.

Cinematography's quite good too. Spinotti > Beebe, though, though it's not without its moments of being distracting.

Mix lots of nice set decoration and costumes, sprinkle on a sporadically interesting screenplay, and liberally stir in some truly dull direction and ya got yerself a yawner...

Ho hum.

Johnny Depp does the Johnny Depp thing as good as always, and then there's a whole host of cool supporting actors - - Marion Cotillard (!), Stephen Dorff, Billy Crudup, Giovanni Ribisi, Leelee Sobieski - - it's like a freakin' freak show, man! Even Christian Bale doesn't manage to croak his part to death, though he's clearly on auto-pilot here.

All the parts sound promising, don't they? Well, they surely add up to a damn sight less than their individual values. I felt numbified walking out of the theatre, despite the frequent car chases and shootouts that punctuated this lackadaisical production.

I blame it on the Mann...


out of

I think Mann is in trouble. He made a $100m art film.

Again.

In his defense, he's only directed 9 movies over the course of 30 years. He's still growing as an artist.

Public Enemies is at times technically impeccable and is a worthwhile film on the whole, but it falls considerably short of greatness. This is because, despite some impressive acting, we don't particularly care about anyone in the movie. Now, that's not necessarily a requirement for a great film but Michael Mann and co. have failed to particularly differentiate between Dillinger and the characters on the other side of the law; other than towards the very end of the film, there's not a real sense of urgency in the cat-and-mouse battles between the gangsters and law enforcement. I have mixed feelings about Mann's trademark camerawork; sometimes it feels out of place in the 1930s setting, and other times it works really well to create a mood. Johnny Depp's performance is fantastic, as the actors brings an understated intensity to Dillinger. Marion Cotillard is also brilliant, easily commanding the camera's attention despite playing a generally low-key character. Christian Bale is not as fortunate as Depp and Cotillard, hampered by a screenplay that doesn't really give him anything to do. This is an interesting film that I would recommend with some hesitations. It has multiple great things about it but there are plenty of misfires as well that are a little too glaring to ignore. B-

libs, has anyone ever told you your a very good reviewer?

film-lover has

Bale did have some great moments, like when he laid down the law on the Romanian woman.

The movie is pretty damn great, actually.

I knew it!

The big shootout is glorious.

Art film?

I like art films.

If this is what you call an art film, then it's the equivalent of this kind of art:

BJs Grade:

B+

very good.

If you want to take a nap, this is the movie for you!

D

hi guys I kind of want to see this but not really

It's solid, but underwhelming. I guess I should have expected more of a Miami Vice-like film out of Mann, but I hoped for something more exciting.

The action scenes and style are great, though, and Johnny Depp is terrific.

You fools!

This is a terrific movie, and y'all should be ashamed for not acknowledging it as such.

Snob.