Cast members Johnny Depp and Marion Cotillard and director/co-writer/producer Michael Mann (L-R) pose at the premiere of the movie "Public Enemies" at the UGC Normandie at the Champs Elysees in Paris July 2, 2009.(Xinhua/Reuters Photo) Photo Gallery>>>

    BEIJING, July 24 -- Michael Mann's John Dillinger movie “Public Enemies” is slow to heat up and never quite comes to a boil. The elements certainly are there with the always charismatic Johnny Depp as the Depression-era bank robber and, in some quarters, idolized Robin Hood. Marion Cotillard, off her Oscar win, plays his lady friend. But Mann and co-writers Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman never crack the meaning of John Dillinger.

    The film veers between fact and legend, sticking mostly with facts, but still is unable to bring its protagonist into focus as either an amiable sociopath or a true anti-hero. He winds up being just a guy who robs banks, which probably is all he ever was, so why such a lavish production? John Milius accomplished as much if not more with “Dillinger” in 1973 at the cost of probably two scenes from “Public Enemies.”

    Because there's nothing in the marketplace right now like “Public Enemies,” Universal should recoup its costs between the domestic and international box office. But the film lacks the juice promised by the teaming of such extraordinary filmmakers with a cast as large as a Hooverville encampment.

    There is both too much going on here and not enough: multiple jail breaks, frequent bank robberies, deadly shootouts with G-men, characters introduced then lost track of. You’d probably have to read the source material, a book by Bryan Burrough, to understand the significance of many scenes.

    The expected big moments are here: Dillinger breaks out of “escape proof” Crown Point, Indiana, jail, driving off in the female sheriff’s (Lili Taylor) own car. The shootout at the Little Bohemia Lodge in northern Wisconsin is a fiasco for the fledgling Federal Bureau of Investigation, which allowed Dillinger to escape.

    If the above feels like a disjointed synopsis, the film is even more of a jumble. Too many of the era’s personalities parade before the cameras — look, there’s “Pretty Boy” Floyd (Channing Tatum) getting shot at long range by Purvis; there’s famed bad guys Alvin Karpis (Giovanni Ribisi) and “Baby Face” Nelson (Stephen Graham) plotting jobs with Dillinger; there’s crime boss Frank Nitti (Bill Camp) growing tired of Dillinger’s juvenile shenanigans; there’s young J. Edgar Hoover (a stiff Billy Crudup) just getting his feet wet!

    You can’t keep them all straight, and a muddy soundtrack doesn’t help. Depp had his own sound technician, according to the end credits, but you still can’t hear him. Between mumbled lines and busy music cues, much of the film’s dialogue is indistinct.

    Depp’s performance is more than credible, but biography seems to place him in a straightjacket. He might be too faithful to the real John Dillinger, which doesn’t allow him to create a character of the imagination, someone who will connect with us today.

    The great Depression-era bank-robbing movie “Bonnie and Clyde,” to which “Public Enemies” undoubtedly will be compared, keeps the focus narrow and intense and somehow spoke to its counterculture era. “Public Enemies” sprawls everywhere with so many characters and winds up being mostly a history lesson unrelated to anything in the zeitgeist.

    The film is now being screened in Hong Kong.

    (Source: Shenzhen Daily/Agencies)