Public Enemies, 4 stars

Ignore the single most frequent criticism of this movie. Johnny Depp is not a complete cipher around which the movie swirls. He is only mostly a cipher, and that is the point. Yes, this is a period piece, and a gorgeously shot and meticulously researched one at that. However, it is also a commentary on the cult of celebrity and its tendency to inflate normal human beings to fill inhuman expectations. Often those whom we make into celebrities are strangely empty vessels for our adoration; the reason for their popularity is a sort of blankness onto which many fans can project their individual desires.

The plot will be familiar to anyone who knows the story of John Dillinger, who robbed banks in the early 1930's, when affection for banks was at a strangely familiar low. He was debonair and charismatic and did a few stints in prison before being shot outside Chicago's Biograph Theater after seeing a gangster film. This near-perfect intersection of notoriety and the media's portrayal of it reminds us why the Dillinger story is so oddly appropriate. Here is a criminal who would have loved the myriad ways of communication available to us today but who was instead born in a time when his physical description was so poorly circulated that he could walk into the Dillinger Bureau of the Chicago police department and, unrecognized, ask for sports scores from the men hunting him. This being a Michael Mann film, there is a foil for Dillinger in the person of Melvin Purvis, an FBI agent trying to make a name for himself. Christian Bale plays this man as so repressed that we can barely imagine him having warm blood, and this performance in my opinion is the low point of the film. Also since this is a Michael Mann movie, there is much well-choreographed gunplay and scenes of men grimly going about their work, whether that work is tracking criminals or counting the take from a robbery. Marion Cotillard, as the sole representative of the fairer sex in most of the film, manages this burden well and seems natural in the period setting, unlike some more minor actors who seem mannered and ill-at-ease. This is a fun film with which to play spot-the-character-actor. The answers to "Is that Stephen Dorff?", "Is that Lili Taylor?" and "Is that Leelee Sobieski?" are all yes, and then some. Most viewers will go into this film knowing what to expect, but those who don't will still find a solid retelling of Dillinger's last years of life, as well as a meditation on who we choose as celebrities and why.