Public Enemies (2009)
Movie · 2009 · Crime, History, Drama · 2h 20m · R · English
Curator score: 3.6/10 (523.4K ratings)
America's Most Wanted.
Overview
Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger's charm and audacity endear him to much of America's downtrodden public, but he's also a thorn in the side of J. Edgar Hoover and the fledgling FBI. Desperate to capture the elusive outlaw, Hoover makes Dillinger his first Public Enemy Number One and assigns his top agent, Melvin Purvis, the task of bringing him in dead or alive.
Ratings
- Curator score: 3.6/10
- IMDb: 6.9/10
- Letterboxd: 3.23/5
- Rotten Tomatoes: 68%
- Metacritic: 70
- TMDB: 6.7/10
Director
Michael Mann
Production
Universal Pictures, Relativity Media, Forward Pass, Misher Films
Cast
Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, Jason Clarke, Rory Cochrane, Billy Crudup, Stephen Dorff, Stephen Lang, John Ortiz, Giovanni Ribisi, David Wenham, John Michael Bolger, Bill Camp, Matt Craven, Don Frye, Christian Stolte, Spencer Garrett, Peter Gerety, Shawn Hatosy, Stephen Graham
Where to watch
Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Curator Review
Verdict
A sleek, melancholy crime drama with superb period detail, tense gunplay, and a strong sense of history closing in on its outlaw hero. It’s more interested in mood, myth, and institutional change than in conventional momentum, so it can feel coolly detached even when it’s at its best.
Best for
- Michael Mann fans
- viewers who like atmospheric crime dramas
- people interested in Depression-era America
- fans of antihero stories and law-enforcement cat-and-mouse plots
- viewers who appreciate digital cinematography and formal experimentation
Skip if
- you want a propulsive, tightly plotted gangster movie
- you prefer emotionally warm or character-rich ensemble crime dramas
- you dislike digital images with a raw, high-contrast look
- you need a clear-cut good-guys-vs-bad-guys story
Overview
Michael Mann turns a familiar gangster manhunt into something colder, sadder, and more modern than the material first suggests. The movie is less about the legend of John Dillinger than about the machinery that replaces him: surveillance, bureaucracy, and a new kind of state power that treats people like targets on a map.
Worth noting
What lingers is the texture. Mann’s digital camera gives the period a strange immediacy, as if the past is being recorded while it disappears. The shootouts are abrupt and physical, but the film’s real tension comes from watching charm, celebrity, and outlaw romance become obsolete in real time.
Bottom line
It can feel emotionally distant, and some viewers will find that coolness draining rather than haunting. But if you respond to Mann’s fascination with institutions, masculinity, and the end of old myths, this is one of his most ambitious and conceptually rich films.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Josh Lewis (4★) · 1079 likes
"Pretty boy Floyd, you're under arrest.""It's Charles... Charles Floyd." Mann is one of the few filmmakers that understands how inherently dehumanizing institutions are (Blackhat his most thrillingly literal translation of the idea); here we see American history, often experienced from a distance, made into a deeply intimate, human portrait of obsolescence—the immediacy of the 'cops and robbers' foreground (gunfire has never been as palpable) a distraction from the real crimes, the real war happening just outside the frame. The… more
matt lynch (4.5★) · 857 likes
Follows Dillinger repeatedly from right behind, that trademark Mann shoulder close-up. Right up until after he's seen himself (or at least the idea of himself, a representation) in a movie. He's the myth now, history not the future. The last time that follow shot happens is a snap before a bullet blows through his cheek, and suddenly he stops short, turns around, and sees it coming.
Neil Bahadur (5★) · 662 likes
I saw recently on here a write-up noting that this film quite literally sits between Miami Vice's stylistic motivations and Blackhat's political ones - I think that's true, but on a bigger, more extreme scale than either film ever reaches. Public Enemies is an enormous film and in my opinion arguably Mann's richest, constantly shifting & intertwining thematic outliers and formal conceits - it's yet another film about Baudrilliardian prison simulacra, but also a film on the birth of modern surveillance… more I saw recently on here a write-up noting that this film quite literally sits between Miami Vice's stylistic motivations and Blackhat's political ones - I think that's true, but on a bigger, more extreme scale than either film ever reaches. Public Enemies is an enormous film and in my opinion arguably Mann's richest, constantly shifting & intertwining thematic outliers and formal conceits - it's yet another film about Baudrilliardian prison simulacra, but also a film on the birth of modern surveillance… more
Jake Cole (4.5★) · 535 likes
In 2006, Mann by pure happenstance aligned with David Lynch and Pedro Costa in providing a canvas for experimenting with the limits of burgeoning digital video technology. In 2009, you could argue that he made an equally inadvertent pairing with James Cameron in testing the new format on an epic scale. But if Avatar is a massive tech demo, Public Enemies is an attempt to see how the grammar of film itself might be manipulated to shake up even the… more In 2006, Mann by pure happenstance aligned with David Lynch and Pedro Costa in providing a canvas for experimenting with the limits of burgeoning digital video technology. In 2009, you could argue that he made an equally inadvertent pairing with James Cameron in testing the new format on an epic scale. But if Avatar is a massive tech demo, Public Enemies is an attempt to see how the grammar of film itself might be manipulated to shake up even the… more
I.V. (4.5★) · 423 likes
"On October 23rd, you robbed a bank in Greencastle, Indiana. You got away with $74,802. You thought that was a big score? These phones make that every day. And it keeps getting made—day after day after day, a river of money, and it gets deeper and wider, week in and week out, month in and month out, flowing right to us." Next scene:"Create informants, Agent Purvis. The suspects are to be interrogated vigorously, grilled. No obsolete notions of sentimentality. We are in the modern age. We are making history. Take direct, expedient action. As they say in Italy these days, 'Take off the white gloves!'"
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Topics
crime drama, historical drama, gangster film, Depression era, cat-and-mouse, institutional paranoia, digital cinematography, period authenticity, gun violence, antihero