Public Enemies (2009)

Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009)

I've never heard and seen a gunshot as ferociously certain as that final gunshot in Michael Mann's Public Enemies. That single gunshot, tame and quiet if compared to the numerous tommy gun battles that populate the film, killed John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), legendary bank robber. Along with the death of Dillinger, is the death of an era championed by criminals of unquestionable renown and mythified reputations. Mann maps the dying days of the era with the surehandedness of a watch-maker, unflinching to the temptation of showing off more than what is required for his purposes. He creates not a film about Dillinger, although Mann's camera delights in capturing every gesture, swagger, and posturing of Depp as the celebrated felon, but an approximated document of the moods of a period characterized by fear, fascination, respect, and awe of these public personalities. That gunshot could have come from anywhere (from the cowardly investigator whose hatred for Dillinger has become personal; or Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), who was specifically tasked to kill Dillinger; or any anonymous cop who was stationed near the Biograph), and it did not really matter. Dillinger had to die that specific death and his body had to be ripped by the public like a basket full of souvenirs. The gunshot just had to happen.

That Public Enemies skirts from characterizing Dillinger only emphasizes Mann's insistence on differentiating myth from person. What we know of and learn about him from the film is limited to the reputation established from the various literature and popular representations through the years, Depp's wonderfully iconic portrayal, and the unsurprising romanticism as can be absorbed from his unabashed love angle with gorgeous mestiza coat check girl Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard). "I like baseball, movies, good clothes, whiskey, fast cars... and you. What else do you need to know?" tells Dillinger to Billie, before spiriting her away into a Depression-era fantasy. Mann channels his uniquely flirtatious Dillinger, and proposes the same Dillinger quote to his audience, manufacturing Public Enemies' Dillinger, not out of autobiographical notes and accurate recounts, but from the American myth that he has become, with his seamless bank robberies, his perfectly planned jailbreaks, his impeccably classy lawlessness (Mann adds a sequence in the film, arguably fictitious, where Dillinger visits the police station, enters the unit specifically assigned for his capture, walks around the office as the cops are busy watching a game, communicates with one of the cops by asking the score, and nonchalantly leaves the compound), and his fairy tale romance with the heartbreakingly tragic end, all overtake his actual history.

Mann makes use of digital video instead of film. The effect is even more apparent here, than in Collateral (2004) or Miami Vice (2006), where digital video complements the vastly modern and urban vistas that are dominated by steel, asphalt, and smog. The period milieu (Depression-era architecture, tommy guns, monochrome suits and automobiles) of Public Enemies feels anachronistic to its digital video aesthetics. In this case, the seeming anachronism is not a disadvantage, as it lends to the perceptual discord that resonates throughout the feature, giving the film a more palpable grit that bears more resemblance to the hyper-real actioners of this post-9/11 era to the stylized ones made during an era where an actual interaction between the public and such violence is more of a far-fetched nightmare than a distinct possibility. Grabbed by the neck by the arresting immediacy of the film's digital video aesthetic, the audience is left with no choice but to get swept away by Dillinger's daring exploits and the period-forced fantasies he proposes to fulfill, enough to smell the melancholic air of that era's eventual demise.

The film is not so much about an era that belonged solely to Dillinger that his timely death signaled its end. Public Enemies, much more than an auteurist recount of the death of an era (and this differentiates the film from such elegiac films like Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) and most recently, Andrew Dominik's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2008), films which primarily mourned the passing of the Old West by the deaths of the heroes that represented the era's virtues), sufficiently details the birth pains of a new era of evolving criminals and adapting law enforcers. When Dillinger witnesses his own obsolescence during the moment he is introduced to the future by a room of desk crooks amassing wealth far greater than any of his elegantly executed bank heists, he knew that he is being replaced. As his comrades' numbers dwindle, either by death, capture, or a logical decision to seek out surer ways of earning an illegal buck, the film retreats from edifying Dillinger into exposing his clever front. That the film ended with Billie in jail, being told by the cop that the fantasy of escape that Dillinger promised her is now an impossibility, simply summarizes the gargantuan lie that birthed these infamous criminals. Beyond their often told and retold exploits, the millions of dollars they robbed from the banks, their famous deaths, are the millions that will swallow anything, whether it be crooks turned into mystified idols, to momentarily escape their sorry lots in life. Truth be told, criminals post-Dillinger can never have the same plebeian charm of also being a dreamer, a toiler, a hero.