la0s on 2/7/2009 at 21:47

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I just came home from watching it in a theater trying to ruin the experience completely (movie broke down 20 min, broken sound and a couple of other annoying f' ups).

Anyway for the people who doesn't like the hd look, they'll hate this. This is definately the most HD-looking movie Mann has ever done. It is unapologetic about it's look, not trying to make HD look like film, but instead saying, this is HD deal with it. It's an artistic choice.

I love the look though, you can see the texture of the actors skin, see the sweat on their face and it gives it a tangible feel. It IMHO gives an immediacy to the story that is very unique, some will call it cheap ass docu-look, I'll call it a very beautiul movie.

Sadly I can't comment too much on the film, or... well I still can't shake it, there just something about it, but with the theater trying to (and to some extent succed in) break my immersion it's hard to feel I got the complete experience.

It's definately not a mainstream action movie, it has a very arty side too it, it's a movie that also (like Miami Vice) has a fragmented quality to it's story. We're moved from point to point, it seems like a collection of "nows", just like the way Dillinger seems to have lived his life. To explain, it not like A -> B. There's A there's B, not always much connecting the two.

And there's truly the feel (again as in MV) that you're thrown into a world, and it's moving forward, you just have to catch up. It demands something from the viewer, and that I really like.

But still it's not perfect, it's maybe a bit too detached, but again that could be the cinema's fault.

Ostriig on 4/7/2009 at 18:22

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Okay, just saw this.

So, let's get that technical matter out of the way first, since everyone seems to be so focused on it - sometimes it looks great, others rather crap. There are those points where the look is fantastic, giving it a fresh and bold appearance, but there are other times where you get this discomforting feeling that you're watching a low budget TV series or the 5 o'clock news. It didn't happen too often, but I did find myself pulled out of the experience a couple of times. As for the crispness of the image that was apparent in the trailer, I can't comment on it since I had the misfortune of seeing it in a room with a crappy projector. Pity, I think they were showing the new Ice Age in the bigger, better equipped rooms.

Now on to the movie itself, I wasn't really blown away. The pacing seemed to wobble at times, and, with one or two exceptions, I didn't really find myself captivated in the tension of the scenes. It doesn't really build up to anything. And if you're expecting a shootout like in Heat or the club scene in Collateral, I think you'll be coming out a bit disappointed. There is this one scene where they appear to be picking up the pace, but it doesn't have much going for it, and an - in my opinion - uninspired dosage of shakycam and quick but pointless angle changes actively works against it.

To touch a bit on the acting, I can say that I liked Johnny Depp, and I think he performed well in a role seemed to stray a bit from what you usually see him in. However, I had formed a different expectation based off the trailer and I was hoping to see something even more remote from his usual style, a yet more aggressive and brutal Dillinger than the one we got, so that resulted in a slight let-down, but it was due to my inaccurate initial impression. Christian Bale, on the other hand, delivers a completely forgettable performance. For some reason, I keep thinking that Kevin Bacon would've been a better fit for the role. As for the rest, seemed to work well without anything spectacular. Bear in mind this is just a casual opinion, I'm not trying to play critic here. I'll say that I was pleasantly surprised to recognise Giovanni Ribisi, whom I liked in Boiler Room, deliver what struck me as a good bit in a minor role.

A conclusion of sorts: I may have come across as rather negative in the above paragraphs, but it's not my intention. It's by no means a bad movie, I thought it was a fairly entertaining watch, but I didn't find it fantastic either. If you feel like going to the cinema to see something, this is probably a good choice, but otherwise I wouldn't recommend you go out of your way for it.

aguywhoplaysthief on 6/7/2009 at 08:05

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Let's make sure that the distinction between 'digital' and 'looks like it was filmed by the Blair Witch guys' is not lost. I don't have a percentage, but I would estimate that the majority of movies are filmed digitally these days.

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This movie would have been 10x better if they had hired a cinematographer and used proper mounts for cameras more than 30% of the time. I'm struggling to think of a single scene that wouldn't have been better if it was shot like a proper movie and not like my Dad's home movies of me as a 5-year-old running wild in the yard.

They had a fantastic setting for a great gangster flick: Tommy guns, Chicago, Depression era, cops in funny hats riding on the outside of cars, and they didn't make a point of showing any of it off as the subjects were placed poorly or the camera was shaking around a forest in low light the whole time. They had gangsters hanging out the sides of 1930's autos shooting machine guns one-handed for God's sake, but I couldn't keep track of any of it!

In a similar vein, one of the biggest characters in any movie (the environment) was on vacation for the entire film. It wouldn't have been so bad if the characters were at all interesting, but they weren't, which brings me on to the next problem:

The story. From what I gather, they tried to keep as close as reasonable with the actual events instead of taking some artistic license with the basic timeline, which is why there isn't any plot with a point, or characters that are memorable or at all important to what goes on. A great example of what should be done in a film like this is to be found in American Gangster. It was based roughly on true events and people, but it was made into a movie that could almost rival The Godfather thanks to creative modifications of the characters and plot (in addition to fantastic editing). It had characters that you could remember who had ambiguous moral compasses, conflicting and diverse motivations, and roles in the story leading the major characters to important events. Public Enemies didn't have that - just random aimless killers with names who got shot up.

Scots Taffer on 6/7/2009 at 10:02

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Fuck me, American Gangster was so generic, it was moviemaking by numbers. Rival The Godfather? Ahahahaha, yeah, that's your best ever joke agwpt.

Anyway, hrm, the more I read the less I can convince myself to go see this - it doesn't just seem to be the cinematography, most people are saying that the compelling narrative just ain't there either. It's sounds like they did a film about the fall of Dillinger without the set-up of how he got there.

Morte on 6/7/2009 at 10:42

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Some of the reviews have made me a bit wary, yeah. But given that I paid money for that turgid monstrosity Terminator: Salvation, I'm pretty sure even the most disappointing Michael Mann flick will seem like Citizen Kane in comparison.