The following should be made clear right away: Madison doesn't figure very prominently in this, the latest film directed by UW-Madison alum Michael Mann. The Capitol serves as the backdrop for a brief press conference delivered by J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) and Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale). The scene lasts all of 30 seconds or so. Now that this disappointing fact has been established, it should also be said that the other 8,370 seconds of Public Enemies"" are pretty remarkable in their own right.
This film is partly founded upon what is arguably Johnny Depp's least ridiculous performance since 1995's Jim Jarmusch freak-out, ""Dead Man."" Depp's penchant for overdoing it, something that's sort of perplexing when one considers how reserved and awkward he is off the screen, is noticeably repressed here. Depp's Dillinger is defined by his often-comical machismo, his subtly expressed narcissism and his talent for delivering one-liners (my favorite: ""There's nothing I want to do in Indiana""). Surrounded by thugs and lawmen who sound as though they wash their clothes in bourbon, he's practically a poet. Also central to Dillinger is his overt sense of self-consciousness, living as though he were constantly being followed by an invisible camera and an adoring audience; little does he know that he actually is being followed by an invisible camera and an adoring audience.
Equally crucial to the effectiveness of ""Public Enemies"" is its employment of the high-definition digital camera. This handheld camera places the spectator right in the thick of things: shootouts, jailbreaks, hushed conversations in dimly lit nightclubs, even the darkness of the movie theater where Dillinger is absorbed by Clark Gable's performance in 1934's ""Manhattan Melodrama."" The film's atmospherics are striking, a mixture of gun smoke, cigarette smoke, vaporous breath and sepia-stained light. The texture of the scar on Dillinger's right cheek is disgustingly (but impressively) perceptible. Simple actions are built from volleys of images, yet neither clarity nor coherence is lost in the process. This disjointed yet logical approach resembles the scatter-shot découpage of Lars von Trier's digital work. Most of the images in ""Public Enemies"" are either razor-blade sharp or fuzzy as felt; in this regard they resemble the compositions of another recent pioneer of HD shooting, Jia Zhangke. Though the film's occasional use of slow motion is regrettable, particularly in the otherwise jarring shootout sequences, ""Public Enemies"" nevertheless seems to give a rough indication of the direction in which cinema is headed.
But how do we situate ""Public Enemies,"" a historically oriented gangster film, within the history of cinema? The film replaces old images with new ones, but does so while self-consciously alluding to those same old images. References to James Cagney and the aforementioned Gable exemplify this phenomenon. However, the film recalls these idols of the past in order to strip them of their glory and bathe them in blood: The combination of cosmetic gore and rapid cutting in ""Public Enemies"" effectively translates the spirit of the 1930s gangster films into a more current, upsetting aesthetic. Dillinger's slogan ""[I want] everything... right now"" more or less captures this new sensibility.
Ultimately, ""Public Enemies"" is a somewhat misleading title. Dillinger is not an opponent of the public; if anything, he's their live spectacle, their ""Scarface"" in the flesh. And Dillinger, quietly in love with his own image, loves them right back. ""Public don't like kidnappin',"" he says at one point, and so he sticks to robbing banks. Dillinger is an enemy of the state, but it is important to recognize that he is basically a threat within the status quo rather than a threat to the status quo. He's just another side effect of capitalist society, able to wreak a little bit of havoc yet powerless to truly destabilize the general order of things.
