Busy being sad yesterday, so I missed some other happenings around the web. The first reviews of Public Enemies are appearing online, and aside from THR they’re mostly very positive.
[UPDATE: I’ll rearrange this post to move the 5-star Empire review front and center. Thanks Midy.]
Whatever James Cameron‚Äôs Avatar may resemble in cinema‚Äôs ‚Äòbig shake-up‚Äô later this year, this less self-aggrandising film, shot entirely on an ultra-high resolution digital format, marks a new cinematic language. The genre may seem familiar, that rat-a-tat-tat of Tommy guns, molls and dapper hoods, but never with this level of immersion. If Mann‚Äôs mission was simply to portray the early ‚Äô30s with pin-sharp realism, he has triumphed. This is not a film about the ‚Äô30s ‚Äî it is a film in the ‚Äô30s…
Mann may squirm, but the Heat-in-the-Depression tag is inevitable. The comparisons are numerous: cascading storylines, languid cityscapes, architectural framing and that rigorous unpicking of male psychology (cops and robbers are all deep-down misunderstood).
Yet, more than just their eras, the two films feel like different worlds. Such is the docu-clarity of this digital skin, you have to readjust your thinking. This isn‚Äôt the glamour of the movies, warmly draped in celluloid, but rather an instantaneous, ‚Äòstunning‚Äô reality: every facial pore, every herringbone stitch, every silvery wisp from a smoking gun comes crystal-clear. Strangely, it makes the film both period and contemporary: history through a sci-fi lens…
Mann’s movie lies at a cusp between great American genres: the dusty borderland between the Western and gangster movie.
From Variety:
“Public Enemies” emerges as a formidable tapestry documenting the indelible seismic shifts of large criminal and law enforcement entities that significantly define an era. As before in Mann’s work, there is a magisterial inevitability to the way the opposing forces gradually converge until violent confrontation is inevitable, a style that justifies the time and attention to detail involved in creating it.
More enthusiasm from Emmanuel Levy:
Structurally, big action scenes of glorious escape from prison and shoot-outs are integrated into the dramatic proceedings. Occasionally, the narrative slows down, in the romantic scenes between Dillinger and Billie, but Mann is a shrewd entertainer who knows when to switch from dialogue-driven sequences to thrilling set-pieces, which the HD cameras of ace cinematographer Dante Spinotti captures in alluring ways. A couple of scenes are simply breathtaking in their visual pizzazz, conveying through dark screens that suddenly erupt into spots of glaring white light both the movement and effect of gunshots…
In its painstaking attention to detail, “Public Enemies” recalls “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” made by another brilliant and perfectionist director, David Fincher. We get a feel of how things looked, but how people thought, how men courted women, what ex-convicts thought about life, fate, and death.
And the most unrestrained rave so far comes from Rex Reed:
Thrilling, glamorous, richly textured and breathlessly action-packed, it is one of the best movies of the year.
It’s all here, exhaustively researched and painstakingly re-created. Curiously, there’s no mention of Dillinger’s wife, Beryl, and Michael Mann’s screenplay, co-written with Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman, takes liberties by condensing some events and combining a few characters, but with so many informers, gunmen and tertiary historic plot contributors, it’s amazing that so few key elements found their way into the discard pile. From Billy Crudup, as the silly, publicity-seeking J. Edgar Hoover, to Johnny Depp’s magnetic starring role, replete with neatly cropped hair, piercing dark eyes, no sign of a tattoo and a lewd smile in the corner of his eyes, every role large and small is polished to perfection. (Johnny Depp gives the best performance of his career.) Even the bank plunders in broad daylight seem freshly staged. Since it’s more in the biographical vein of Bugsy than the grand opera of The Godfather, no easy comparisons come instantly to mind. But with the shiny cars with white-wall tires; the tailored, double-breasted pinstriped suits that give you an idea where Giorgio Armani’s fashion inspiration comes from; the music (lots of early Billie Holiday and big band jazz); and the navy blue midnight world of the Great Depression—Mr. Mann does more to illustrate the fabric of the gangster era than any film since Pete Kelly’s Blues.
In the process, Public Enemies becomes one glamorous, glorious, gun-blazing whale of an entertainment.