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Public Enemies

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 35 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 158 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Crime | Drama | Suspense/Thriller
Written by:
Bryan Burrough (book "Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34")
Ann Biderman
Michael Mann
Ronan Bennett
Directed by: Michael Mann
Release Date:
Theatrical: July 1, 2009
Running Time: 140 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for gangster violence and some language
Starring Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, Giovanni Ribisi, Billy Crudup, Stephen Dorff, Rory Cochrane, and Channing Tatum
No one could stop Dillinger and his gang. No jail could hold him. His charm and audacious jailbreaks endeared him to almost everyone—from his girlfriend Billie Frechette to an American public who had no sympathy for the banks that had plunged the country into the Depression. But while the adventures of Dillinger's gang thrilled many, Hoover made Dillinger America's first Public Enemy Number One. (Universal Pictures)
Also On Metacritic
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Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Empire Ian Nathan
Intelligent and challenging: Mann's crime epic could take two viewings to fully absorb, but it's worth every devoted minute.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Matthew Sorrento
This is the purest of American narratives, and this, indeed, is one of our finest storytellers.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Simultaneously an art film and a crime film, Mann's latest work may not give you a ton to hang on to emotionally, but the beauty and skill of the filmmaking keep you tightly in its grasp.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Scott Foundas
Mann's exhilarating movie exists in a state of perpetual forward motion.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Public Enemies comes at you like Dillinger did: all of a sudden. It's movie dynamite.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Without ever telling viewers what to think or how to feel, it raises more questions about the corruption of crime and crime fighting than any expose or thesis.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
This is a very good film, with Depp and Bale performances of brutal clarity. I'm trying to understand why it is not quite a great film. I think it may be because it deprives me of some stubborn need for closure.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
Michael Mann's extraordinary Public Enemies is an unusual sort of gangster picture, a near-impressionistic recreation of the last year in the life of one of American history's most notorious bank robbers.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
The picture throws off an aura of wistfulness, which may be Mann's acknowledgment that of course he can't re-create the past. The best he can do is to honor the idea of it, storybook-style, and to remind us that before there was gangsta, there were gangsters.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones
Cotillard doesn't look part Native American or sound like a Thirties Chicago moll, but damned if she isn't a sight and sound to behold. Whatever her technical limitations, she rises above them to breathe a flesh, blood, and battered verisimilitude into the part. You can't tear your eyes off her, any more than you can Mann's flawed but still engrossing picture.
Read Full Review >Premiere Robert Calvert
This is better than your average bio-pic. The dynamic established between the motivation of Bale’s and Depp’s characters is really what makes this film. Kudos also go out to Channing Tatum as Pretty Boy Floyd.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
The problem here is that while some of Mann's work is overwhelmingly great, the sum of it simply never compels.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
If Public Enemies lacks anything, it's something audiences can't legitimately expect to find: a certain EXTRA something.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
It's quite engaging. It is competently constructed and often compelling, but it will not be mentioned in the same breath as some of its classic predecessors.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
A welcome adult alternative to summer's sophomoric blockbusters. The only transforming going on here is actors skillfully taking on roles of '30s-era gangsters and lawmen.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
It's a fascinating bundle of contradictions -- authentic in a million details, deeply romanticized in others. Cool, calm and collected, this is more love story than gangster picture.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
Mann excels at staging the chaotic bank jobs and bloody shootouts that were just a day at the office for Dillinger, but even at 140 minutes the movie is so dense with incident that there isn't much room for cultural comment or character development.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
Public Enemies has incidental pleasures (its hi-def video palette is fascinatingly weird), but it’s only Depp’s sense of fun that keeps it from being a period gangster museum piece.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Marvelously detailed and meticulously crafted, an elegant evocation of Depression-era America and its fascination with crime. What the movie lacks is any sense of elation--it’s joyless by choice.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Could have used a lot more grit. Without it, we're left with a crime movie fantasia that slips all too easily into the ether.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
As filmmaker Michael Mann takes pains to emphasize in his handsome, underheated gangster drama Public Enemies, the gent may have been murderous, but he had style.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
Yet, for all its skill, Public Enemies is not quite a great movie. There’s something missing--a sense of urgency and discovery, a more complicated narrative path, a shrewder, tougher sense of who John Dillinger is.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Joe Neumaier
You see the spark of 'this is cool!,' but you don't sense a purpose. The underconceived Public Enemies suffers from that lack of drive, though Johnny Depp is so urgent and charismatic as John Dillinger, he provides enough firepower to make the film legit.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
Mann reduces a legendary game of cat-and-mouse to the size of a standard police procedural. His refusal to mythologize Dillinger’s exploits is audacious, but too much of Public Enemies feels disappointingly smaller than life.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
The parts, in other words, promise a brilliant whole. So why is this movie one of the signal disappointments of the year? You have to go back to the basics: Public Enemies has everything going for it except a reason and a script.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
Perhaps the most regrettable crime here is the way that Mann, trying to do too much, robs himself of a great opportunity. Here was a chance to capture the drama of the Thirties.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
The film lacks the juice promised by the teaming of such extraordinary filmmakers with a cast as large as a Hooverville encampment.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Oddly, too, the film is somewhat shortchanged by its great star, Johnny Depp, who disappointingly has chosen to play Dillinger as self-consciously cool rather than earthy and gregarious.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
It lacks overall focus, and at the end you may have a question for Michael Mann: Why'dyou bother? [July 6, 2009, p.59]
Slate Dana Stevens
It's like spending an afternoon--a long one--at a beautifully lit wax-museum display inspired by earlier gangster movies.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Dan Zak
It's also a double-barreled bummer. There's no excitement in the bank-robbing, no thrill of the chase, no emotion over justice served or thwarted. Depp's Dillinger is neither charming nor despicable, nor does he occupy that delicious gray area between the two. His spree unspools dispassionately, cold as a Colt .380.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.5 (out of 10) based on 158 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Snehit V gave it a7:
Watch it for Depp's acting and the movie's realistic feel
Winston L gave it a10:
Johnny Depp is on my Oscar-watch.
Elias L gave it an8:
Unexpectedly good film...a little bit uneven though because the ending was not as good as the other parts of the film.
Jim S gave it a4:
Sound on or sound off, it is the same movie. Visually exciting, but that is about it. Dull uninteresting characters. Are we really to believe that John Dillinger never laughed or had a good time! Although it gives an accurate historical timeline, it fails to connect on any emotional level. All style, no substance; on balance a mostly forgettable film.
Sandy M gave it a10:
Loved it! Johnny Depp was perfectly cast as Dillinger and very believable. Marion, who played Billie Frechette, his girlfriend had an ethereal look about her that you just couldn't take your eyes off her. They were absolute magic on screen. Though it was bloody and violent, it was not overly so since this is a gangster movie about bank robbers and a man who was and lived a very violent life. Loved the charm and brashness that Depp portrayed in the role. And loved the original Chicago scenery.
Tony O. gave it a6:
Not bad, but a bit unnecessary. Depp is fine, Bale slightly less so. Lots of machine gun fights, some dull car chases, lots of mildly interesting gang interactions which lead nowhere in particular, and (of course) the obligatory OTT torture scene that every American crime movie seems to have these days. But it is a french/native american woman that gets tortured by brutal fat FBI agents, so no harm done! All in all, vapid narrative, but well directed.
Evin C gave it a6:
Boring but the acting is well done. Rent it. see if it's your taste.
