Public Enemies

Public Enemies
*/5
Michael Mann

This was, to say the least, not so great. I had been excited by the posters featuring Johnny Depp looking just like a 30s gangster. I was drawn in by Depp's ability to blend into a character even when there is not 10 layers of makeup on him.

Unfortunately, thanks to HD technology, it was plain to see that Johnny Depp was under makeup in this role, too. Could the filmmakers have made corrections for this? Probably not. They were too worried about the fact that their sound was unusable and their lead actress switched accents every day. Oh wait, they didn't seem worried about that, either.

This movie was a complete failure. I was actually shocked to learn that Michael Mann had even made a movie before (remember my ignorance of anything after 1959). This one was so poorly slopped together I left the theater thinking, "Maybe Johnny Depp will be in my student film." If Michael Mann is so Oscar-worthy than how come this movie looked worse than stuff at dinky film festivals?

The sound was a horrible problem, peaking all the time, and characters often "spoke" while turned from the camera. Thanks to editing, you can pretend you know what you're doing! Gunshots were painfully loud and the intermingling of Billie Holiday and electric guitar soundtrack was so preposterous I laughed out loud.

HD was the wrong choice, especially when your actor is notoriously covered in tattoos. If you're going to still use HD, please try not to use extreme closeups on parts of his body that have cover-ups. It confuses the audience as to whether they're supposed to notice it or not.

The acting was bewildering and pathetic from everyone buy Johnny Depp, and even he struggled with the unreasonable dialogue he had been given.

Aside from technical concerns, the movie just didn't make any gosh darn sense. In trying to create an artistic spin on a film noir type story, the writers/director just stole the sex scene from Breathless. I just scanned 20 pages of threads for this film on IMDb, and no one seems to have noticed.

I have never seen a movie in a theater that shows such incompetence.

Recommendations:
White Heat
Public Enemy