- This was astoundingly dull, especially for a gangster flick. There’s absolutely no dramatic tension for the first two hours, which I find incredibly problematic given the volume of machine gunfire we experience. I had no idea you could make jail breaks and bank heists seem so bland and yet I can’t fathom why I am shocked by this since I found Michael Mann’s last outing, the ghastly Miami Vice, to also be lacking in the excitement* department despite the high-speed boat chases, exotic locales, excessive weaponry, and drug deals gone bad.
*And by “excitement” clearly I mean “basic ability to prevent my mind from wandering”. - It does not surprise me that the film’s saving grace is the part of the story mentioned in High Fidelity:
John Dillinger was killed behind that theatre in a hail of FBI gunfire. And do you know who tipped them off? His fucking girlfriend. All he wanted to do was go to the movies.
Heh. Starting from when his girlfriend gets arrested, the movie picks up dramatically because you know exactly what’s coming and you’re finally able to feel the palpable tension when Dillinger is cockily daring his female companions to turn him in and practically begging to get arrested by waltzing through the FBI office dedicated to his capture. It’s this kind of ballsy swagger that’s missing from the rest of the movie. It’s there in the character, but the filmmaking isn’t there to support it anywhere else. - The number of bit part cameos for a variety of decently known actors was quite large in this, so I’m wondering if people suckle at Michael Mann’s power teat the way they do for Martin Scorsese. The difficulty is that they are all so faceless as Dillinger’s army of goons and colleagues that most of them are pretty indistinguishable from one another. To keep them sorted out I eventually just stuck with referring to them mentally by their other roles: Faramir, teen dance flick guy, the jock from The Faculty, Simon Tarses* from Star Trek, etc. And Captain Jack Sparrow and Batman, of course.
*As a side note, this guy is EVERYWHERE, frequently as a military man. He was in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and, most notably for me, he’s definitely in Air Force One. No matter what capacity he shows up in, Amelia and I always say “SIMON TARSES!” - Christian Bale is wasted in this movie. The epilogue titles at the end let us know that he was done with J. Edgar Hoover professionally a year after Dillinger was killed. OH GOOD.
- I thought the scene with the J. Edgar Hoover Urban Achievers was kind of amusing.
- The score was really, really bad. It kept bringing up these weird grand epic romance motifs in the wrong contexts and was pretty damn distracting. The song used in the trailer was included in the movie (thank god), although I always feel weird when they play a song more than once. There’s also this other 1920s-1930s blues song that appears in this, Walk the Line, and Ken Burns’ Baseball and I hate it every time I hear it because I associated it solely with Baseball and it feels like a scene setting cop out when I hear it elsewhere. It’s what I imagine the American Dustbowl would sound like if it were music.
- There was someone at my screening who laughed like a JAWA. I am not looking for a droid that speaks the binary language of moisture vaporators, thanks.
Related posts: Miami Vice , The New World , W. , 3:10 to Yuma , The Reader
DAVID WENHAM WAS IN THIS MOVIE?!?
*has an aneurism*
He needs to be in more movies. He really does. I’ve got half a mind to go see this movie now and risk the boredom. But only half a mind.