- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
100This is the purest of American narratives, and this, indeed, is one of our finest storytellers.
-
100Intelligent and challenging: Mann's crime epic could take two viewings to fully absorb, but it's worth every devoted minute.
-
Mann's exhilarating movie exists in a state of perpetual forward motion.
-
90Simultaneously 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.
-
90A grave and beautiful work of art.
-
88Public Enemies comes at you like Dillinger did: all of a sudden. It's movie dynamite.
-
88This 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.
-
88Michael 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.
-
88Without 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.
-
80The 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.
-
78Cotillard 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.
-
75It'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.
-
75If Public Enemies lacks anything, it's something audiences can't legitimately expect to find: a certain EXTRA something.
-
75For people who loved "Heat," this is a tour de force.
-
75A 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.
-
75It'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.
-
75This 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.
-
75The problem here is that while some of Mann's work is overwhelmingly great, the sum of it simply never compels.
-
70Public 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.
-
70Marvelously 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.
-
70Mann 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.
-
67As 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.
-
67Could have used a lot more grit. Without it, we're left with a crime movie fantasia that slips all too easily into the ether.
-
63Ultimately, the movie's a bust.
-
60You 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.
-
60Yet, 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.
-
58Mann 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.
-
50The film lacks the juice promised by the teaming of such extraordinary filmmakers with a cast as large as a Hooverville encampment.
-
50Disappointing, curiously uninvolving.
-
50The 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.
-
50Perhaps 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.
-
50It's like spending an afternoon--a long one--at a beautifully lit wax-museum display inspired by earlier gangster movies.
-
50It lacks overall focus, and at the end you may have a question for Michael Mann: Why'dyou bother? [July 6, 2009, p.59]
-
50Oddly, 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.
-
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.
prev
next
Page:
- 1
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 65 out of 109
-
Mixed: 17 out of 109
-
Negative: 27 out of 109
-
8Just a solid picture. Great cast. Cinematography was great. Micheal Mann has a very distinctive style and it really shows in the film.