2 of 3

Americans were enamored with Dillinger

Just as Mann questions our admiration of lawmen, he refuses to show contempt for criminals. He's interested in Dillinger's extraordinary popularity across the U.S. during the Great Depression. Why did we love a crook so much? Perhaps it has something to do with our own resistance to conformity and control. Dillinger single-handedly humiliated the nation's authority figures and made a mockery of the U.S. justice system. Mann suggests that the nation, fed up with their leaders' insufficiencies, found Dillinger's one-man show rather exhilarating. Through ongoing jailbreaks and bank busts, he exposed the incompetence of our technology, our scientific methods, and our assertions of God-like power.

At the end of Heat, there is an unsettling camaraderie between the cop and the bank robber. Even as they are locked in competition, they develop enormous respect for each other's strength of will. No joke: We see the "hero" and the "villain" hand-in-hand at the end of the film.

Similarly, we see a lawman bond with Dillinger in the closing minutes of Public Enemies. (Surprise: It isn't Purvis. It's another manhunter, one more familiar with what it takes to survive a dozen shootouts.)

Crime and the law are almost mirror images in Mann's world. In Public Enemies, both the criminals and law enforcement are increasingly corporate ventures. The man of vision suffers under a heightening pressure to conform. The real crime on Mann's mind isn't bank-robbery, but the dehumanizing consequences of greed and ambition. Mann doesn't deny that Dillinger is a criminal; he's just more interested in the aspects that motivate him and make him such a success. He's interested in the trails criminals blaze, and how they blaze them.

The moral center to Mann's universe is an elusive thing.

We watch Dillinger admiring the glamorous crooks of the 1930s movies he attends—like the one played by Clark Gable in Manhattan Melodrama. Likewise, Mann is sometimes a little too taken with his tricksters. The "bad guys" lose in the end, but we can't shake the impression that Mann's enamored of the professionalism and zeal of these crooks.

Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx in 'Collateral'

In Heat, the crooks get what they have coming, even though the lawmen lose a great deal along the way. And in Collateral, the bewildered innocent (Jamie Foxx) watches the glamorous villain (Tom Cruise) come to a moment of realization, an apprehension of emptiness that echoes the despair of General Kurtz at the end of Apocalypse Now: "The horror, the horror."

But in Public Enemies, the crimes of Dillinger's gang are not portrayed with the same seriousness as the brutality of the lawmen. Mann seems almost giddy in the presence of these bank robbers, dazzled by their style. His camera avoids the carnage of their cruelty. But he does not hesitate to show us lawmen abusing their power, shooting innocents and even beating a woman. This too easily brings the audience into rooting for killers.

To some extent, I can understand Mann's sympathy for his villains. There is honesty in his portrayal of Dillinger's appeal. In the real world, evil flourishes precisely because it is seductive, appealing, and almost reasonable. Dillinger's way is a path of visceral excitement, sensual pleasure, amplified ego, and high adventure, and he is reacting against some real societal wrongs like greed and arrogance.

"And what do you want?" Billie Freschette (Marion Cotillard) asks Dillinger. "Everything," he says. "Right now." And that is precisely what he gets. His glory lasts only a few fleeting moments. He has his reward.

Sure, it is all taken from him. The wages of sin close in. But it's a bittersweet justice. As it should be. These were not merely cold-hearted crooks. They were people with dreams—however misguided—pursuing what was denied them in their early years. (Dillinger's father beat him, disillusioning him to authority. Billie never knew the love of a father, and was seduced by Dillinger's authoritative love for her.) We know that Dillinger got what he "deserved," but we also have seen that he was a tragic human being who never quite found the right way to chase a dream.

next page... |  2 of 3

Related Elsewhere:

Public Enemies	Printer view