Could 'Public Enemies' be on Oscars' hit list?
"Public Enemies" opened today to divided reviews but may have enough fans among film critics to still be in the mix of movies cited at year's end. The pedigree of talent behind "Public Enemies" is certainly first-rate. And biopics have long been a favorite of the various groups that fete filmmakers.
Johnny Depp, who portrays '30s gangster John Dillinger, has picked up three Oscar nods in the last six years – "Pirates of the Caribbean," "Finding Neverland" and "Sweeney Todd." Marion Cotillard, who plays the gangster's moll, was an Oscar winner two years ago for "La Vie en Rose." Christian Bale, who plays the FBI agent in pursuit, is an A-list star who mixes commercial smashes ("The Dark Knight") with critical hits ("I'm Not There"). And writer-director Michael Mann has four Oscar nods under his belt – three for writing, directing and producing "The Insider" and another for producing "The Aviator."
Manohla Dargis of the New York Times described the film as, "a grave and beautiful work of art. Shot in high-definition digital by a filmmaker who’s helping change the way movies look, it revisits with meticulous detail and convulsions of violence a short, frantic period in the life and bank-robbing times of John Dillinger, an Indiana farm boy turned Depression outlaw, played by a low-voltage Johnny Depp." For Dargis, "Much of what makes the movie pleasurable is the vigor with which it restages our familiar romance with period criminals, a perennial affair. But what also makes it more than the sum of its spectacular shootouts is the ambivalence about this romance that seeps into the filmmaking, steadily darkening the skies and draining the story of easy thrills."
Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times said, "Mann often wants to do traditional films but do them differently, do them better, enabling the audience to feel both the newness and the tradition. With 'Public Enemies,' he has made an impressive film of great formal skill, one that inescapably has a brooding dark-night-of-the-soul quality about it." And Turan lauds the leading man noting that, "A restrained performance like that only succeeds when it's given by an actor as intrinsically charismatic as Depp. His Dillinger can be as ruthless as the next guy and handy with a submachine gun when his bank robbery spree demands it, but what we end up admiring are his nerve, his style, his long gabardine overcoats (reminiscent of the long dusters worn by those other Midwestern movie outlaws, the James gang) and his hip, round sunglasses. This is star power acting with magnetism to spare."
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times thought, "This Johnny Depp performance is something else. For once an actor playing a gangster does not seem to base his performance on movies he has seen. He starts cold. He plays Dillinger as a Fact." And Claudia Puig of USA Today said, "Director Michael Mann mounts a technically proficient, visually enthralling crime drama anchored by the low-key but captivating performance of Johnny Depp as legendary bank robber John Dillinger."
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Photo: Universal Pictures
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The Academy WANTS to give Johnny Depp an Oscar. Desperately. This may be the film that gets it for him. Bad guys, criminals(see Denzel's 2nd Oscar for "Training Day) are catnip to the Academy and it's also based on a real-life person. He'll definately be nommed. Marion, too. She won't win because she just did, but she steals the picture. I'm actually shocked at the range of critical opinion on this. I'm in the Manohla Dargis camp on this one. Loved it.
Posted by: Stephen Holt | July 06, 2009 at 04:02 PM
Can't wait to see Public Enemies! I live only a couple miles away from where they shot the movie in Wisconsin. And I love Gangster movies. Awesome!
Roger Ebert giving Public Enemies a 3.5/4
Rolling Stone giving it 3.5/4
New York Times 4/5
Los Angeles Times 4/5
Again, can't wait to see it!
Posted by: zxcv | July 02, 2009 at 11:55 PM
First of all, old tube radio's don't turn on instantly. It takes about 20 seconds to "warm up".
But why constantly switch between an obvious handheld video camera and period cinematography? It is like someone channel surfing during the movie. Extremely annoying.
Posted by: hammster | July 02, 2009 at 07:02 PM
Check out my thoughts on Depp's portrayal of John Dillinger as well as a complete review of Public Enemies only at: http://www.precioustimeny.com/blog/?p=1861
Posted by: BMW | July 02, 2009 at 05:55 AM
Public Enemies (2009)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1152836/
Director : Michael Mann
Don't read if you are planning to watch it!
Public enemies has so much going for it...great actors, a very interesting story, great art direction and customs and supposedly a great director...but the great director woke up one day and decided to shoot all these good acting and period outfits/sets/story with HD camera , on hand with an editing similar to Blair witch project at times, without much effort into lighting ....full of unnecessary close ups and a chewed up story line...and yet drag it for 2 hours and 23 minutes or so.
He...the respectfully, selfish and lazy(?) Michael Mann, single handedly has ruined one of the potentially best films that we could've seen in last few years....I am really upset...as you can tell... (lazy: he is so hard working...he does so much research...just to ruin it like that?)
Here is the thing...if somebody else made it probably I wouldn't have cared...but he is an amazing film maker...so no matter what, when you go in the theater, you go with certain expectations...
Why the hell such bad editing? why such ugly reality t.v. quality cinematography? why so much on hand camera movement even when two people are sitting across a table and talking? some of the best moments of this film is simply ruined because of lack of proper lighting...because well HD can shoot everywhere in any lighting....so let's abuse it...
and so many weird angles for camera...many many uninspired framings...while the camera is picking from behind a table or through bushes...are we telling how aliens saw the history of gangsters in 1930's?
....and what the hell going on with the sound engineers? I mean $100-$150 million dollar movie and the sound is as weak as many student films...room full of people and barely any back ground sound...these are such weird amateurish flaws...
everybody look like playing dress ups since with HD we can see that everything is so new and fresh pretending to be from a different era....no lighting for creating the right atmosphere and ambiance...
I am very disappointed...at least if the editing was not too fast when it didn't need to be you could appreciate some of the acting moments...but no...let's go all the way like "shield" (t.v. series)...
I am going to stop now...
I wouldn't buy this film....in my head Michael Mann owes me two films to get his respect back...one for this and one for Miami vice...
Maybe it's me...maybe it's not...you be the judge for yourself...but I have made my judgement (short version) above...
Posted by: Wolf189 | July 01, 2009 at 08:20 PM
Overall I'd give Public Enemies a "B" or "B-". It was good; not terrible yet not great. I think the weakness lied in the screenplay; too many facts and events of that time woven together a little carelessly. I think the smartest thing that should have been done was have Bryan Burrough and Mann adapt it; usually non-fiction book adaptations are the hardest to adapt, and it pays off to have someone (the author) write the screenplay who has done so much research about that time. Aside from that, Depp was good, as well as Cotillard and Bale; I actually liked Bale's performance more than anyone. This is a classic case of a film being salvaged, from a bad screenplay, by the director. Mann did a superb job directing the cast and inventing shots that built so much tension. Lastly, I think it would be a sin not to mention Dante Spinotti's brilliant, absolutely brilliant cinematography; he lit the film's sets with such a diverse range of color and captured Mann's visuals flawlessly. If Spinotti doesn't win cinematography for this, let alone not be up, it will be one of the biggest mistakes the oscars have made in the past decade. Overall Public Enemies was a good movie, and one of Mann's best; the actors did their best in working with what they were given from a mediocre screenplay, the visuals were stunning, and the film, through historically accurate and inaccurate events, recreated a time that remains one of the most tormented, hopeless and exhilarating periods in American history.
Posted by: Patrick | July 01, 2009 at 06:13 PM