Movies About Men: Public Enemies.
It’s always been one’s lingering suspicion, hasn’t it, that Johnny Depp might not be quite as flawless as he seems? He’s Tim Burton’s guy; he’s done takes with Brando; and like all good Hollywood pin-ups, he hasn’t got much to say if the camera isn’t rolling – what’s most remarkable is he’s got into position playing the kinds of roles he’s always wanted to. ‘Compromise’ isn’t one of the many descriptive that’ll be applied to Depp when his star’s natural light has faded, when he dies clutching a moment in the mandibles of his now trademark subtlety, daring it to be something twisted, something phantasmal.
It certainly doesn’t seem to matter what kind of moment it is. It could be a murder sequence in something as suited to surrealism as Sweeney Todd was, or five hundred odd seconds of Hunter S. Thompson shooting up, or The Libertine’s central debauchee launching a crushing diatribe on universal morals. Whether or not he actually gets them to - the moments to do as he pleases – is another matter entirely, one that more than ever, post Public Enemies, is deserving of near-scientific scrutiny; because – because, my pretties – another word we’ll use to describe Depp, if we are level-headed and discerning, is ‘misused.’
This is, after all, the fine gentleman who signed up to make those Pirates sequels – innocent fun, of course, but clear and certain nose-dives to any self-respecting thespian. But we’re not here to talk about whether Johnny’s entitled to be tactful and nice about his career choices, because he is. What we’re trying to do here is get everybody thinking analytically about every Depp performance you’ve ever called brilliant and applauded accordingly – then consider whether you were clapping before or after the movies in question had even begun.
I have, you see, and find myself levitating in a problematic hyperspace. There are in life those cinema outings where you sink into the darkness as usual, but discover that after an hour, an hour and a half, two, you’re yet to disengage from your job, your bills, the all-round traffic of life. It’s supposed to be a clincher – a film about one of the most revered bank-robbers in American history, John Dillinger, played by the seasoning clown-prince of modern-day actors. Never mind the Depression-era setting; there’s no escape on offer because the entire time you’re watching Johnny Depp.
It’s saddening to write, but his complete lack of presence got me thinking… about his lack of presence in the nevertheless charming Finding Neverland, in the pleasantly tooth-decaying Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. He should be having fun, playing John Dillinger for schmuck’s sake, but all the while he’s Johnny Depp, just doing his job and not a great deal more.
It may occur to you, as it did to me, that there are a variety of emotions simply not in Depp’s nevertheless vast repertoire: rage, boisterousness, sadness, confusion. He made desperation and enthusiasm his own as Ed Wood, but to my mind has since abandoned them.
Depp’s co-star Christian Bale, another champion of our cinematic times, demands to be filmed every time he walks into a scene, as lead officer on the hunt for Dillinger, Melvin Purvis. The trait is useful, given that director Michael Mann barely has a screenplay in place. Public Enemies contains extended attempts at theatre, with its quick hellos and swift goodbyes, and the dirty ballet indulged in by well-dressed criminals, fur-coated beauties and cops in fedoras; but this puts added pressure on the ensemble’s eyes, ‘cause therein the dialogue must take place, and on words that aren’t whole enough to withstand a breeze.
It all feels rather empty, the scene that sees Dillinger, for instance, sneaking into quarters of the police unit charged with his apprehension under the auspices that all he wants are the baseball scores. He dwells for a moment on newspaper cuttings of himself and comrades who are mostly dead; and for a second you wonder what’s going through his mind: is it regret? – sadness?- pride? Practically none of the above, because all Dillinger does is grin, escorting himself out of there with all the charm and swagger of a sophisticated action-figurine.
Another crushing disappointment is the moment Dillinger actually dies. He’s shot dead on a street, stalked by swarms of cops, and flanked by the innocent immigrant ladies who set up his demise. If this is how it happened, well and good – but just because America’s public enemy number one, for a time, got gunned down on the sidewalk is no excuse to make the process look this cheap.
I could tell you Marion Coittard, delicious as she is, looks an awkward guest rather than the anti-hero’s love interest, no thanks to some shoddy lines, her character’s strange French/Cherokee heritage and perhaps a little too much lipstick; that Billy Crudup makes for a stocky but just too tight-assed J. Edgar Hoover, infamous director of the FBI; and lastly, putting my hammer down, that Stephen Graham could have done with more screen-time as the wonderfully cocky Baby Face Nelson (the man’s British, for crying out loud). But stating this takes too much heat off Michael Mann, who coincidentally also shot a film called Heat, and isn’t doing plenty to escape that picture’s gravity. As co-screenwriter, all his best dialogue emerges when guns are exchanging rapid fire, then vanishes ‘til the next time blood gets a chance to spill.
This is a somewhat polemical piece on Johnny Depp because all the film’s shortcomings present him with the chance to rescue it from artistic limbo, if only he’ll escape his artistic comfort zone. Depp fails to rise to the occasion, in a role that a fan like me swore he was born to play. This came nowhere near The Assassination of Jesse James, aesthetically and also on the basis of the lead performance. In it, Brad Pitt was towering as the title character, and paranoid and savage all at once, and made a valuable case for his own place in Hollywood history. In Public Enemies, Johnny Depp was Johnny Depp, but it turns out that just won’t be enough anymore.
POPCORN: A movie based on a book based on a legend – so it’s amazing how little it has to say for itself.
