My take on Public Enemies.

In all honesty, I liked the movie. It was enjoyable. Maybe a little slow in parts, but I was intrigued the whole time. I could see my friend checking her watch about every ten minutes after the first hour and I wasn’t sure why. I guess it just wasn’t her type of movie, I don’t know.
Seriously, to me, it could have been a little longer. The book on which it’s based (I haven’t finished it yet) is more on the formation of the FBI. I felt the two strongest performances, Bale and Crudup, were completely underutilized. At the end of the movie, I felt a little cheated. Nothing seemed to come full circle. After Dillinger’s whole gang was killed it seemed to lose steam. Instead of trying to glorify a brutal murderer, it should have focus more on the good guys’ side. In my opinion, Bale is the master of accents. His portrayal of Purvis was great.
The prison break and bank robbery scenes were fantastic, they were exciting and on-the-edge of your seat thrilling. I didn’t mind the shaky cam, which seems to be a main complaint. It helped give the movie a more real feel to it. All around, the performances were great and Mann directs just as good as he always does, a little different than before, but it’s good to shake things up (no pun intended).
I felt that this flick would be Mann’s chance to redeem himself for Miami Vice, which I liked and feel it catches too much criticism. He was too concerned with revisiting Heat, that’s why he only focused on the one side of the law, but he did it so well before, he should have just done it again. I feel it would have made the movie one of the best of the year. It had so much potential but was wasted. It gets a little tiring just focusing on Dillinger the whole time. When they’re not robbing banks, they’re on down time doing more or less nothing. All and all, it isn’t Mann’s best work, but it was a great effort. I would say the movie is good, just falling short of great.
For an overall rating, I give Public Enemies: 7.5/10.

Maybe I expected way too much from this flick.

I would recommend this movie to any fans of Michael Mann, the crime genre, gangster genre, or period piece fans.