Pictures courtesy of IGN.comPublic Enemies starring Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, and Marion Cotillard, directed by Michael Mann, soundtrack by Elliott Goldenthal, costume design by Colleen Atwood.
Back in the days of the Great Depression, when times were tough (not unlike today, only much worse); a time of bank failures, foreclosures, homelessness, the stock market crash, unemployment as high as 25%, drought and crop failures, and no safety nets of FDIC, unemployment insurance or welfare except for charity, couldn't even get a drink on the up and up due to Prohibition, folks turned to celebrity (besides religion) to raise them up out of their depths, if only for a little while. To cheer them on, 'cause if they ain't got nothin', at least somebody got somethin'. Score one for the little guy. And some turned to crime.
Ma Barker and her boys, the Baby Face Nelsons, the Pretty Boy Floyds, the Doc Morans, and the John Dillingers. It wasn't a complex time - if ya needed money, ya took it, and if ya did, you knew that the Feds would come lookin' for ya, so ya got a network of safehouses and contacts. A very colorful time in our history.
John Dillinger is played with debonair restraint and hypnotic charisma by Johnny Depp, and his nemesis, Melvin Purvis, trying to catch the bad guys while keeping some semblance of integrity in the Hoover FBI organization, is played by the always great Christian Bale. And in a truly La Grande Passion, Dillinger's love interest Evelyn "Billie" Frechette is played by Marion Cotillard, a part-French, part Native American woman who works as a coat check girl, dice girl and dancehall girl in Chicago, where she meets Dillinger. They are a sort of kindred spirits - don't matter where they came from, just where they're goin' to that matters.
The action is heart-stopping at times, you could hear a pin drop when during a scene where Dillinger and his gang break out of prison, steal the fastest car at the police station, the first Ford V-8, the police and National Guard surrounding them as they stop at a red light, and then the pedal-to-the-metal getaway after the light turns green and they were a safe distance away. Wheeeeee! Ahem . . . okay, I'm alright now. And Johnny's Dillinger seems to love the thrill of just getting away by the skin of his teeth and almost getting caught, and his celebrity status. He isn't without honor either, doesn't subscribe to the racism of the day, if you're all in the same boat you're all equal, and is always a gentleman with Billie, and is even just slightly insecure about her feelings for him and vulnerable.
The soundtrack is outstanding (Otis Taylor's Ten Thousand Slaves theme and the wondeful gospel singing of the Indian Bottom Association of Old Regular Baptists' Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah) and the music from the jazz era. Diana Krall sings Bye, Bye Blackbird, and Billie Holiday sings the romantic George Gershwin's The Man I Love. The cinematography of the rural southern Illinois and Indiana farm country and it's people is gorgeous, and the period detail, and the costumes are rich and sumptuous.
But times change, with the advent of new laws and with the use of telephone technology to enhance boilerroom bookie outfits, Bernie Madoff-style, and so it was with the great gangster era.
Back in the days of the Great Depression, when times were tough (not unlike today, only much worse); a time of bank failures, foreclosures, homelessness, the stock market crash, unemployment as high as 25%, drought and crop failures, and no safety nets of FDIC, unemployment insurance or welfare except for charity, couldn't even get a drink on the up and up due to Prohibition, folks turned to celebrity (besides religion) to raise them up out of their depths, if only for a little while. To cheer them on, 'cause if they ain't got nothin', at least somebody got somethin'. Score one for the little guy. And some turned to crime.
Ma Barker and her boys, the Baby Face Nelsons, the Pretty Boy Floyds, the Doc Morans, and the John Dillingers. It wasn't a complex time - if ya needed money, ya took it, and if ya did, you knew that the Feds would come lookin' for ya, so ya got a network of safehouses and contacts. A very colorful time in our history.
John Dillinger is played with debonair restraint and hypnotic charisma by Johnny Depp, and his nemesis, Melvin Purvis, trying to catch the bad guys while keeping some semblance of integrity in the Hoover FBI organization, is played by the always great Christian Bale. And in a truly La Grande Passion, Dillinger's love interest Evelyn "Billie" Frechette is played by Marion Cotillard, a part-French, part Native American woman who works as a coat check girl, dice girl and dancehall girl in Chicago, where she meets Dillinger. They are a sort of kindred spirits - don't matter where they came from, just where they're goin' to that matters.
The action is heart-stopping at times, you could hear a pin drop when during a scene where Dillinger and his gang break out of prison, steal the fastest car at the police station, the first Ford V-8, the police and National Guard surrounding them as they stop at a red light, and then the pedal-to-the-metal getaway after the light turns green and they were a safe distance away. Wheeeeee! Ahem . . . okay, I'm alright now. And Johnny's Dillinger seems to love the thrill of just getting away by the skin of his teeth and almost getting caught, and his celebrity status. He isn't without honor either, doesn't subscribe to the racism of the day, if you're all in the same boat you're all equal, and is always a gentleman with Billie, and is even just slightly insecure about her feelings for him and vulnerable.
The soundtrack is outstanding (Otis Taylor's Ten Thousand Slaves theme and the wondeful gospel singing of the Indian Bottom Association of Old Regular Baptists' Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah) and the music from the jazz era. Diana Krall sings Bye, Bye Blackbird, and Billie Holiday sings the romantic George Gershwin's The Man I Love. The cinematography of the rural southern Illinois and Indiana farm country and it's people is gorgeous, and the period detail, and the costumes are rich and sumptuous.
But times change, with the advent of new laws and with the use of telephone technology to enhance boilerroom bookie outfits, Bernie Madoff-style, and so it was with the great gangster era.
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