
I’ve been waiting three years to delve into the work of one of my all time favourite film-makers Michael Mann, the great stylist of male machismo within the milieu of the crime film, the chronicler of the pursuit for perfection in not only what you do but how you live your life on either side of the rule of law. As a colour degraded Universal Studio title materialised on screen I knew we were in for quite a ride, as in all of Mann’s pictures every fragment of the film has been attuned to deliver a perfectly realised whole, in this case an assured 21st century update of the iconic gangster cycle of films unleashed by RKO and Warner Bothers back in the 30’s and 40’s.

It’s 1933 and America is in the midst of the great depression. Crime is booming as a parade of bank robbers, bandits and desperado’s unleash a tsunami of anarchy throughout the American landscape, a rogues gallery of colourful monikered criminals such as Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd and John Dillinger making a mockery of the hamstrung police who are unable to pursue their quarry over state lines or make any concerted, integrated offensive to crush the transgressors. Johnny Depp is the infamous John Dillinger, the most successful and charismatic bank-robber of the era whose antics force the state, personified in J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) to create the nascent FBI, dispatching their top agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) to bring Dillinger and his crew to justice, dead or alive.
I’m not the first to realise that the film has a familiar structure to many of Mann’s other films and could slot quite easily into a trilogy with ‘Thief‘ and ‘Heat‘ – a charismatic central male protagonist who is operating at the very peak of his professional powers who is engaged in a tragic, doomed romance. The anti-heroes personal code of honour ultimately signaling his demise at the hands of powerful forces beyond his control be they the criminal syndicate perturbed by the unwanted attention his infractions are bringing upon their organisation or the forces of law and order who demand retribution and the re-establishment of the status-quo. When I first saw the trailer I was a little worried that the HD technique wouldn’t gel with the historical period, thankfully those concerns swiftly disintegrated as the film unfurled, the digital verite technique plunging the viewer into a state of gripping immediacy, fully immersed in the midst of the action so much so that you’re almost crouching down in the seat to avoid the bullets ricocheting around the theatre during the battles and quietly admiring the contours of the performances during the character scenes. As usual with Mann the production values are state of the art, the locations are beautifully decorated and lit, the costume design magnificent, the evocation of period thoroughly convincing.

The robbery and combat sequences are outstanding and prove once again that Mann is the finest action director in America, the high point being a pitched battle staged at the Little Bohemia Lodge out in the remote Wisconsin woods. Incredibly this was shot not only in the real cabin that the real Dillinger fought his way out from but the scene was shot quite unintentionally (Mann only realised the coincidence after revisiting the production schedule) on the same date – April 22nd – that Dillinger evaded justice some 75 years prior. That’s serendipity. The cast – and what a cast – are also uniformly excellent, even Bale invests his character with more than a simple brooding intensity which seems to be his autopilot mode these days, he’s a little more flippant yet still steely determined to take Dillinger down using the most advanced forensic methods available. Depp keeps things distant, you never quite get a grip on who Dillinger was or what drives his chaotic intentions, the only insight into his character delivered in a dialogue exchange with Billie where he replies to her concerns that she doesn’t know him enough to turn outcast with him - ’I like baseball, movies, good clothes, fast cars… and you. What else you need to know?’ The likes of Stephen Graham (the nutter from ‘This is England’), Stephen Dorff, David Wenham, Lili Taylor and Leelee Sobieski round out one of the best casts I’ve seen for quite some time.
Mann is the undisputed master of the crime film and thoroughly understands its dimensions, archetypes and history. Beyond the pleasing references to prior masterpieces of the genre in the film he also alludes to some of the key components of gangster movies, the transformation from agrarian reform to the city that is manifest in the earlier Warner Brothers and RKO pictures as well as an almost abstract feeling of America in transition from the frontier world to mass industrialisation. This is evident when the rogues in ‘Public Enemies’ flee from jail or successful robberies and emerge in the American wilderness in short thrift, as the crime cycle of Cagney and Bogart in the 1930’s usurped the popularity of the Western in American cinema its heroes shifted from the gunslinger to gangster, bidding a fond farewell to their cinematic forebears. So here then is a collection of some of my favourite moments and reviews of one of my most admired directors as best I can track them down, I will keep links to my overall favourite gangster films for my ‘Once Upon A Time In America review. Let’s close on the climax of one of Mann’s other favourite films, Made it Ma, top of the world‘.




















