Public Enemies

Oh Johnny Depp, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways…Edward Scissorhands, Sweeney Todd, Jack Sparrow, Cry-Baby, Ed Wood, Sam, Roux, George Jung, Sir James Matthew Barrie and now, the magnificent, John Dillinger.

Mom and I went to see Public Enemies today and it was amazing. In a way I didn’t really expect, but amazing nonetheless. I really expected Johnny Depp and Christian Bale to fight for attention on screen, but either Melvin Purvis really was a spineless fool who did not in any way command attention and Christian Bale nailed that role so perfectly as to also not command any attention, or Christian Bale just wasn’t trying. But I hardly noticed him, which was a strange thing to realize halfway through the movie. After Batman, John Connor, Jamie Graham, Thomas Berger, Laurie, Patrick Bateman, Quinn Abercromby, Alfred Borden, and Dan Evans I’m so completely accustomed to focusing entirely on him that I forgot he was there. I don’t know enough about Purvis to know what he was like in real life. All I know is that he paled in comparison to Dillinger, but I think most everybody did.

And I have to give it to Billy Crudup for playing J. Edgar Hoover with such relish, but without going over the top.

The attention to detail was amazing. The costuming, all the different cars and guns, even the vernacular was spot on. It was so easy to just find myself tumbling down the 30’s gangster rabbit hole. The shoot outs were brutal and sharp and loud; no punches were pulled to save the audience their popcorn. The only thing that caught me as strange was that Dillinger wasn’t ever smoking. In a time where just about everyone smoked, it seemed odd that he didn’t. I’ll have to look that up to see if he smoked or not, although I’m sure that Johnny already did that research. Mostly I now want to know more about Dillinger.

The one piece of dialogue that has stuck with me throughout the day came not from Dillinger however, but from Carey Grant from the movie footage from Manhattan Melodrama – “Die as you have lived, all of a sudden.”