It’s enemies plural because there are several of them — and you may even have heard of Pretty Boy Floyd, for instance, though you have to look fast to see him in this movie — but it’s really all about Public Enemy #1, of course, Mr. John Dillinger himself. You can tell he’s the important one, not to mention the charismatic one, because they got Johnny Depp to play him. (And let me just add here how incredibly relieved I am that they didn’t let Leonardo DiCaprio play him. He has such a hard time looking mean.) He doesn’t really look like Dillinger, but he does pretty well with the attitude, which is sort of becoming his standard attitude. But hey, stick with what works.
This is based on a book called Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34, but no one really cares about that, clearly, because as expected it ends up being more of a general outline. Most of the things that happen in the movie did happen, but some happened in a different order or in a different place, and lots of them have a slightly different spin on them. It’s Hollywood! We have to jazz it up for the ticket buyers!
Movie plot: Charming outlaw John Dillinger leads a daring escape from the very beginning of his second jail term, embarks on a life of crime, part two, and wins over the public with his polite ways (he offers his coat to a chilly hostage), care not to shoot anyone who isn’t already shooting at him, and crooked little smile. He meets a pretty girl named Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard), falls in love, robs more banks, falls in with a bad crowd — a worse crowd, I mean — and finally proves that Crime Doesn’t Pay.
Real story: Dillinger gets rescued by his friends at the beginning of his second jail term and actually does win over the public (see above), but not his wife, who divorced him while he was still in prison the first time around. But he still meets a pretty girl and falls in love, but her name is Evelyn Sparks, born Frechette, who sometimes used the alias Billie — Mrs. Evelyn Sparks, to be precise, but neither of them lets that little detail get in the way, as the unfortunate Mr. Sparks was in prison anyway. She apparently liked bad boys. And he was bad — John apparently also still had a favorite brothel, and later a favorite lady of the evening, but he was still very upset whenever he and Billie/Evelyn couldn’t be together.


Twins! Okay, maybe not, but the attitudes match.
That all had to be tidied away for this, of course, but honestly, films like this just about have to ignore stuff like that. It was almost two and a half hours as it was. There was a good crowd, though — parts of it were filmed not very far from where I live, which makes sense, since John did spend most of his life and criminal career in the upper midwest. Little Bohemia Lodge, for instance, where Dillinger and “Baby Face” Nelson had a massive shootout with federal agents, is in northern Wisconsin. You can still go up there and find cartridges and see bullet holes and some luggage the gangsters left behind, because the owners of Little Bohemia know a good tourist-attracting scheme when they see one. Anyway, lots of people who live around here were extras for some of the street scenes. The two bank robberies that actually took place in in Racine, WI, and Sioux Falls, SD, were filmed in Oshkosh, WI, which isn’t terribly far from where I’m sitting right now. Several people in the audience could be overheard pointing out buildings they recognized.
Now, because I write these, I always try to avoid other people’s reviews. I don’t want to be influenced one way or the other, though I suppose I just end up looking silly if I disagree with absolutely everybody. So I usually don’t read reviews after I write mine, either. Anyway, the point is, this time I’m borrowing the overheard assessment of the other two people who stayed behind to watch the credits with me: Not great.
That translates to three idols. Not a sad score by any means, but a lot less than I was hoping to give. Like a lot of biopics, it was a little too long, and a little too twitchy sometimes, which will happen when you have to cut out large chunks of your subject’s life to avoid making a four-hour movie, but is still kind of a shame, and kind of annoying. Because they all worked hard on this. They used Little Bohemia, and the movie theatre where Dillinger was shot, and everything looked wonderful. But in the end, there wasn’t really a character who I could sympathize with. Johnny Depp and Christian Bale as determined FBI agent Melvin Purvis both act up a storm, but the agent is too distant and the character not developed as much as I would have liked, and Dillinger was, well, Dillinger. He may have been a gentlemanly crook, but he was still a crook, so there’s only so much you can do with him.

I usually have a soundtrack when I dream. This time, I was able to get it recorded before it flew off into the ether. It is a simple piece with an odd feel… in that it is mostly a 3/3/2/3/3 feel… but not always.
Dances and Dames
So, if you’ve been sending music commissions to my dreams… congrats, you found an effective way to jump the queue.

Truth of the Legend – one of my favorite new pieces.
Rising Game
Living Voyage – Eastern fusion
Willow and the Light

A Movie Critic Next Door first: I get to review the same movie twice! Okay, so it isn’t really that thrilling, but I take my excitement where I can get it.
Instead of Walter Matthau, we have Denzel Washington as beleagured civil servant Walter Garber (not Gerber), though he’s still dressed sort of the same. The original character was Zachary Garber, but they changed it here as a nod to Walter Matthau. Nothing against Walter Matthau, but Denzel is easier on the eyes. Instead of Robert Shaw as big bad guy Mr. Blue, we have John Travolta as big bad guy Ryder (not as in subway rider — this is a tribute to the original Mr. Blue, whose real name in the first flick was Ryder).
And instead of a mere one million dollar ransom, we have a demand for $526,315.79 per person, or ten million dollars and one cent. The penny is Walter’s broker fee, apparently, though I’m pretty sure that’s a little low. I was also a little off on my earlier guess of a fifty million dollar ransom, in more ways than one, but you’ll see about that when you watch the movie.
It all starts out basically the same: the guns might be a little fancier, but Ryder and his goons still all board the train separately, do their maneuvering, and the next thing you know, there they are in the middle of a dark tunnel, just them, 19 hostages, and one indestructable laptop computer. See, they can be techier now, and they are, but they do a good job. I mean, it isn’t just techy for the sake of being techy. I really need to find out if this is a return to the original novel these movies were based on, or if they’re getting farther away. Yeah, just what I need, another book to read.

The New York Transit Authority, keeping the world safe for democracy!

Because this is the 21st century, it isn’t just the bad guys who have skeletons in their closets. Thanks to the internet, everyone’s little secrets start slipping out as things move along, making everyone distrustful. I was surprised people didn’t start suspiciously interrogating themselves. Google has much to answer for. Also, Ryder isn’t the calm, collected bad guy that the first Ryder was. John Travolta actually foams at the mouth at least once. Seriously. But he is organized, and very John Travolta-like. I’m not entirely sure myself what I mean by that, but he does have very similar styles for his bad guys. And his good guys, come to that, but it works for him. He’s actually very unnerving when he calls Walter his hero. Would you want to be the psychopathic killer’s hero?
Anyway, the supporting cast is just as good. John Turturo (The Good Shepherd) plays hostage negotiator Camonetti, and Luis Guzmán is Phil Ramos, one of the hijackers. I swear, that guy’s never out of work. He was also in The Bone Collector with Denzel Washington as a forensic tech — your official MCND trivia for the day. And it’s a good movie, worth a solid three and a half idols. The half is because they didn’t do any product placement. Hooray! Except for John Travolta’s watch, which is a Breitling, which he’s the spokesperson for. Crap. Okay the half is because they remembered their roots and gave a nice tip of the hat to the original main characters. There.