Magic Review: Public Enemies

How Cool does this movie look? 1930's Mobsters, Bank robbers, Women, Tommy Guns.....I would love to have been the marketing guy at Universal Studio's whose job it was to market this to the general public. On that topic, this movie was simply posterised around my city as a picture of Depp with a small smirk on his face, that my friends is wasted potential and the irony is, so was this movie. This has what one would refer to as a stellar cast and under the direction of one of my 1990's favourites, Michael Mann (Heat (1995), The Insider(1997) & Last of the Mohicans(1991) it could have been award winning. The story surrounds FBI Agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) tracking down Notorious Depression Era Bank Robbers John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham - Lock Stock) and Pretty Boy Flyod ( Channing Tatum). Purvis comes under the direction of FBI Director J Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup -Almost Famous) who plays a great part and shows the rise in power of the FBI not long after its inception. Dillinger is a modern day Robin Hood, loved by the public but hated by the authorities. He is followed by his merry band of men including Homer Van Meter (Stephen Dorff), Pete Pierpont (Australian Dave Wenham) and one of my favourite actors Jason Clarke who plays his loyal right hand Red Hamilton. All of these charachters were big names in that era and took many banks for many dollars. The reason I point out this cast in almost full is to highlight that even when you have a great cast, the script must follow suit. This failed to occur in this instance. As much as I would love to higly rate this movie, I cant as I felt it was wasted potential. The opening scene of the movie has Purvis (Bale) shoot down and kill Pretty Boy Floyd portayed by Channing Tatum. This to me was ironic as Tatum is a great actor and to kill him in the opening scenes only highlighted to me that the movie was dead before it started. There were enjoyable moments such as the old cars being used to depcit the 1930's Chicago and its culture and Depp is always amazing and from what I hear he studied Dillinger's every known fact however like Miami Vice (2006) , Ali (2001) and Collateral (2004), Michael Mann has done mediocre attempts at trying to outweigh a bad script with a good cast. Balance is the key!
Magic Rating: 6.6/10