by Erika Livingstone

Created on: July 27, 2009

This is a two star film.

The Script: Co- written by the producer, director and editor, Michael Mann (Hancock, The Last of the Mohicans), Public Enemies was setting itself up to be the next great auteur film. Unfortunately, what makes an artist great sometimes is the criticism. When the writer also produces a film, he is his own boss and can be as creative as he wants. Sometimes, that's just what an artist needs to shine. In this case, what Mann needed most was someone to give him a reality check.

One of the biggest cliches in film is the appearance of the so-called "exposition fairy", a person who shows up specifically to get things explained to them so the audience will understand. Several of the characters were exposition fairies. For instance, Billie Frechette (the love interest), points out to John Dillinger several times (at least three) that she shouldn't go along with his plans because she hardly knows him. At one interval, he explains that his mother died when he was a child, his daddy beat him because that was all he knew how to do, and he grew up on the farm. Is she happy now? I'm waiting for the chess game. Dillinger setting a grass fire the same way he accidentally started the grass fire on the farm where he lived that killed his momma to avoid capture later in life. I would have even taken a flashback. But no, that one line is most of the characterization that there was.

If you know that John Dillinger robbed some banks and not much else going into the movie, you will leave knowing that he was also caught. That's about it. Even though Billie (ham-handedly) provides an opportunity for Dillinger's past or personality to come out, it never does. Not why he wanted to rob banks, or what he did with the money. Perhaps if Michael Mann had attempted to let us get to know John Dillinger, Bille could stop asking about it and get on with her own character.

The Characters: The biggest let-down. A lot of great films have some patchy dialogue (Gran Torino had some), but a film without characters is a waste. I wanted to know about Dillinger. What he was like, what his motivations were, what was going on in his head, why he was different from the rest of us. I'm still waiting.

His pals in the movie, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Baby Face Nelson, and... some others... are completely skipped over in this film. Pretty Boy Floyd is a running silhouette in an orchard before Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) picks him off. This would be fine, except for the sudden surge

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