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Wanted: John Dillinger
I'm not FilmNerd, but I have the cred to say this because I'm a DillingerNerd. (For example, when I was 21, I was such a geek on the topic, I drove around the Midwest tracing Dillinger's trail as it was laid out in John Toland's famous 1961 book The Dillinger Days.)
The Michael Mann/Johnny Depp Dillinger mess is Hollywood schlock that riddles the actual (and for that matter, compelling) story of Dillinger's mad 1934 run with lazy factual errors. (The movie is loosely based on a 2004 updated version of Toland's book, Bryan Burrough's excellent Public Enemies.)
I'm not going to bore you with the list of all the errors—although, the fundamental: That Dillinger was a bank robber and not a mobster, was apparently lost on Mann and so his film misses the mark badly.
But my gripe isn't about Mann getting the facts wrong; whatever, it's Hollywood, they wanted a girlfriend story, fancy cars, slick machine guns, and Chicago glamour rather than dingy St. Paul apartments, prostitutes, and scribbled notes in cigarette packages. The real problem with Mann's movie is this: He didn't bother to do any storytelling at all.
Quick. Question for Mann or Depp—and this is ironic, given that the film, in part, pretends to be about the FBI's talent at personal profile detective work ("Dillinger wouldn't see a Shirley Temple picture," one gruff lawman says as the squad narrows its final Dillinger ambush between two movie theaters): What was Dillinger doing before he was robbing banks?
Prologue, you guys. Prologue. Otherwise, we've got no reason to care.
The Michael Mann/Johnny Depp Dillinger mess is Hollywood schlock that riddles the actual (and for that matter, compelling) story of Dillinger's mad 1934 run with lazy factual errors. (The movie is loosely based on a 2004 updated version of Toland's book, Bryan Burrough's excellent Public Enemies.)
I'm not going to bore you with the list of all the errors—although, the fundamental: That Dillinger was a bank robber and not a mobster, was apparently lost on Mann and so his film misses the mark badly.
But my gripe isn't about Mann getting the facts wrong; whatever, it's Hollywood, they wanted a girlfriend story, fancy cars, slick machine guns, and Chicago glamour rather than dingy St. Paul apartments, prostitutes, and scribbled notes in cigarette packages. The real problem with Mann's movie is this: He didn't bother to do any storytelling at all.
Quick. Question for Mann or Depp—and this is ironic, given that the film, in part, pretends to be about the FBI's talent at personal profile detective work ("Dillinger wouldn't see a Shirley Temple picture," one gruff lawman says as the squad narrows its final Dillinger ambush between two movie theaters): What was Dillinger doing before he was robbing banks?
Prologue, you guys. Prologue. Otherwise, we've got no reason to care.
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