Adapting Bryan Burrough’s 2004 popular history of the same name, Mann and co-screenwriters Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman jettison context and drop us in the middle of things: It’s 1934 and Dillinger is breaking a group of confederates, including mentor Walter Dietrich (James Russo), out of the state prison in Michigan City, Ind.
Actually, I’m guessing Dietrich is his mentor, since the movie never makes clear who he is. It isn’t very clear about anything, other than that John Dillinger was an exceptionally cool dude who robbed banks for a living. “Public Enemies’’ presents him as living wholly in the moment - he’s a successful Zen sociopath - and takes a similar present-tense approach to its storytelling. We don’t learn anything about Dillinger’s background or the reasons for his behavior. He is who he is, and who he is is a mystery.
OK. Other movies have been made from this existential-bad- ass cloth, and better ones. “Public Enemies’’ works fitfully on a scene-by-scene basis, but there’s nothing to fit the pieces together, and after a while you realize the movie’s not about anything. No larger idea enlivens its 143 minutes, other than that Dillinger was a folk hero and FBI head J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) was a fame whore. Mann just follows the chronology and sends us home.
For the second movie in a season, Christian Bale locks so furiously into a part that you gasp for oxygen whenever he’s onscreen. His G-man, Purvis, has no family, no past, no nothing other than his mission to scour America of its barnstorming gangsters. “Public Enemies’’ underscores his decency - he’s a better man than his boss Hoover or the FBI underling (Adam Mucci) who roughs up a female suspect - while showing him to be an unstoppable instrument of justice. He’s Dick Tracy, no less but, unfortunately, no more.
