Public Enemies

Empire Ian Nathan

Intelligent and challenging: Mann's crime epic could take two viewings to fully absorb, but it's worth every devoted minute.

Film Threat Matthew Sorrento

This is the purest of American narratives, and this, indeed, is one of our finest storytellers.

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.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

A grave and beautiful work of art.

Village Voice Scott Foundas

Mann's exhilarating movie exists in a state of perpetual forward motion.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Public Enemies comes at you like Dillinger did: all of a sudden. It's movie dynamite.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

If Public Enemies lacks anything, it's something audiences can't legitimately expect to find: a certain EXTRA something.

TV Guide Cammila Albertson

For people who loved "Heat," this is a tour de force.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Ultimately, the movie's a bust.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Disappointing, curiously uninvolving.

Slate Dana Stevens

It's like spending an afternoon--a long one--at a beautifully lit wax-museum display inspired by earlier gangster movies.

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.