Stars: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, Billy Crudup, Stephen Dorff, Stephen Lang
Running time: 139 mins
Rating: ★★★

A LOT is expected from director Michael Mann after such stylish movies as Heat, The Last Of The Mohicans, Collateral and Miami Vice.

And, for me, Public Enemies doesn’t meet those expectations.

It’s a disappointingly ordinary – and dare I say, dull? – gangster movie about “the fast and dangerous life of John Dillinger”.

His well-executed bank robberies in Thirties America made him public enemy number one and the target of J Edgar Hoover’s FBI and that outfit’s top agent, Melvin Purvis. He was shot dead outside a movie theatre, something I already knew and Public Enemies adds little to my knowledge. There are shootouts galore, done with Mann’s customary flare for maximum rat-a-tat-tat effect, and a top notch cast, who are left mainly without anything much to work with. If only Mann had paid more attention to the script than getting the period details and violent encounters right.

Johnny Depp wears the fashions well and handles a gun to the manor born, but looks aren’t everything. I wanted more about the man than the myth. Only in his relationship with girlfriend Billie (Marion Cotillard, an Oscar winner for her performance as Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose) do we get any emotional backlash.

Dillinger is painted as a kind of Robin Hood figure who robs the banks that the public hold accountable for the financial crisis (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?). He was assisted in his crimes by Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham) and Alvin Karpis (Giovanni Ribisi), who are motivated more by greed and sadism than a need to do good.

Hoover (Billy Crudup) sees the pursuit of Dillinger as a way to make his own name and establish the reputation of the FBI. His assigns his top agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale, fresh from Terminator Salvation) to capture the dashing gangster.

Even the deadly rivalry between Dillinger and Purvis fails to light up the screen, mainly because Bale, fast becoming the most boring actor on the screen, is no match for Depp’s cool criminal tendencies.