DIRECTED BY Michael Mann
STARRING Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard
US 2009 140 mins.
Johnny Depp doesn’t get a lot to do in Public Enemies. He’s John Dillinger, a famous American gangster of the early 1930s – “Public Enemy No. 1” on the nascent FBI’s list of villains – and of course he’s very cool. Gangsters were cool in the early 1930s. Hollywood made gangster movies, blurring the line between life and Art, and indeed Dillinger himself was (famously) gunned down right after watching Manhattan Melodrama, a gangster movie starring Clark Gable. Gangsters were among the day’s celebrities, bringing glamour to the lives of the Great Depression-battered masses. “Take me with you, mister,” pleads a tired-looking woman early on, when Dillinger takes shelter in a farmhouse.
Dillinger is cool, then – and Depp, of course, is effortlessly cool. Trouble is, his coolness here is fairly conventional. He romances Marion Cotillard; he calls women “doll”; he looks good with a tommy-gun. “Hey doll, it’s me,” he says, with a touch of the Humphrey Bogarts. He does daring things like going into a police station just for fun, daring the coppers to recognise him. (They don’t.) Most of the time, however, he’s just a pretty face with a soupcon of moody melancholy. Captain Jack Sparrow is better than that.
The most important thing about his coolness is that he’s a Man of the People, refusing to take part in a kidnapping because “the public don’t like kidnapping”. He prefers bank robberies – and even there he’s something of a Robin Hood, telling a customer to put his not-yet-deposited money away; he’s here for the bank’s money, not ordinary people’s (of course it would’ve been the bank’s money if Depp and his gang had arrived 10 minutes later, but we’ll let that slide). He does take hostages to aid his getaway, but only very charmingly; “Here you go, doll,” he tells a scared bank bimbo; “Somethin’ to remember me by.”
The theme of Public Enemies – the latest film by ace director Michael Mann, best known for Heat (1995) and The Insider (1999) – is that times are changing. Glamorous gangsters like Dillinger are being squeezed out by two opposing forces, both equally organised. On the one hand, there’s the FBI, whose ambitious director J. Edgar Hoover – a Fascist-leaning type who at one point makes a veiled reference to Mussolini – vows to “fight crime scientifically” (he’s also modern in working with the media, feeding information through a publicist). On the other, there’s the Mafia – the so-called “Syndicate” – who are putting together a business venture, and don’t have time for romantic individualists like Dillinger.
It’s a variation on the classic Western theme of the Outlaw crushed by the forces of Modernity. It looked pretty good in The Wild Bunch – but The Wild Bunch was 40 years ago, and Public Enemies offers nothing new except a certain visual metaphor. Though the whole film is shot with a video camera, Dillinger’s world is allowed a soft, burnished look – see e.g. the early scenes at the club – that recalls the velvet sheen of celluloid, whereas the FBI’s world is more video-like, with burned-out light, sallow skin tones and visual artefacts (see, for instance, Dillinger’s trial, or the way car headlights are allowed to go blurry in the scene where he’s escorted from a plane by the Feds). The old world gets old-school (film-like) visuals, the FBI’s new world gets modern (video-like) visuals. It’s a nifty idea, albeit a tad academic.
Alas, visual schemes aren’t quite enough when a film has a weak script, no memorable characters and no compelling reason to exist. Mann’s visuals are fine, as always, and some of the action scenes are well-staged, but everything about Dillinger feels second-hand – his romanticised plight, his touch of the sociopath, his wholly banal love affair with Billie Frechette (Cotillard). Christian Bale gets nothing to do – except look square-jawed – as Melvin Purvis, the G-man on his trail, and the supporting villains (who might at least have justified the title) are shockingly generic.
Above all, Public Enemies is cold, a case of a director nowadays more interested in technical questions than fleshing out the onscreen people. ‘I know nothing about you,’ complains Billie near the start of her romance with Dillinger. “I like baseball, movies, good clothes, fast cars and you,” replies the Public Enemy; “What else d’you need to know?”. For a quick shag, this might be enough. For a 140-minute movie starring Johnny Depp, we need a little more.
TRANSPORTER 3 ***
DIRECTED BY Olivier Megaton
STARRING Jason Statham, Natalya Rudakova, Robert Knepper
France 2008 104 mins.
Something is wrong in the state of Sunday Mail film reviewing when we ignore The Private Lives of Pippa Lee – a smart, well-acted drama about a woman racked by guilt and the need to be ‘good’, written by the daughter of legendary playwright Arthur Miller – and instead write about Transporter 3, a film in which Jason Statham not only fights a dozen thugs single-handedly but does a striptease at the same time, taking off his coat, tie, shirt and belt and using them as weapons. Also on hand is a villain so evil – in the time-honoured style of such things – that he kills his minions when they talk back, a middle-aged French sidekick discussing Dostoyevsky, and a redhead Ukrainian nymphet who tells Jason to “make playtime for me” – then, when her attempts at seduction fail, comes up with the obvious explanation: “Oh! You are the gay!”.
Fans of the first two Transporters – the gloriously ludicrous franchise made in France by writer-producer Luc Besson and his team – know this is something of a burning question. Why, after all, is Frank Martin (our hero) so attached to his car and his rigid inflexible “rules”? Didn’t he resist a woman’s advances in Transporter 2? (She: “Is it because of who I am?”; He: “No. It’s because of who I am.”). Can it be he really is “the gay”? Alas, Frank doesn’t get outed as the first same-sex action hero in this new instalment – quite the opposite – but Transporter 3 does have fun with the series’ familiar elements, especially Francois Berl?and as the aforementioned French sidekick, a fan of Jerry Lewis as well as Dostoyevsky. Then there’s the nymphet, playing coy with Frank – at one point he threatens her with a spanking – getting drugged up on E’s and punctuating an insanely elaborate car-chase with background wails of “I’m hungry!”.
It’s easy to make Transporter 3 sound cheesy and so-bad-it’s-good; those who made it clearly have a keen sense of the ridiculous. But two things are important to note. First, Europe’s perpetually-struggling movie industry would be much healthier if the Continent learned to make more of these sparky entertainments as well as – not instead of – the forelock-tugging dramas that make ‘European’ film a dirty word for so many punters. Second, those of us who regularly trek to the multiplex for Hollywood action flicks know how rare – and marvellous – it is to find a film that not only hems its hero into a seemingly impossible spot, but allows him to use his brain to get out of it. I knew Transporter 3 was worth a write-up when Frank found himself at the bottom of a river, trapped inside a car he couldn’t swim away from (he’s wearing a special bracelet that’ll explode if he strays more than 75 feet away from the vehicle) – yet managed to escape this predicament in a way that’s smart, amusing and wholly original.
“There are no more countries,” says the villain, enjoining our heroes to “think global, not local” (“Think this!” says the nymphet, holding up a middle digit) – but in fact there are still countries, and
it’s scandalous that Hollywood uses its clout to open the likes of G.I. Joe worldwide while the French-made Transporter 3 (made in 2008) has to wait a year for a berth at the Cineplex. Pippa Lee may be more prestigious, but I’ll tell you this: one Transporter is worth a hundred Transformers.
TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL
The Toronto International Film Festival – the biggest in the world, in terms of the sheer number of films shown – is now in full swing, running Thursday to Saturday (September 10-19 this year) and drawing thousands of film buffs from North America and the world beyond.
I should know; I’ve been one of them for most of the past eight TIFFs. This year, alas, I’m staying at home – but I can still peruse the line-up from a distance, hoping (often against hope) to see these films in Cyprus soon, if only at a festival or the Friends of the Cinema Society.
Here are 10 of this year’s highlights, in alphabetical order. Are you listening, Cypriot powers-that-be?…
ANTICHRIST. Shocking, misogynist, unbearably graphic – but also bold, fearless, visionary. Love it or hate it (and most, to be honest, did the latter), Lars Von Trier’s horror thriller was the talk of Cannes.
DOGTOOTH. A film we might actually get to see – because it’s in Greek, though quite unlike other Greek films. A claustrophobic tale of three young people on an isolated country estate, it won the ‘Un Certain Regard’ section at Cannes.
AN EDUCATION. Powerful drama, based on the true story of UK journalist Lynn Barber’s affair with an older man as a bright 16-year-old in early-60s London. Peter Sarsgaard and newcomer Carey Mulligan give stunning performances.
THE INFORMANT! The prolific Steven Soderbergh returns with this playful take on the whistle-blower genre (think The Insider), starring Matt Damon as the incompetent snitch. Early word is hugely positive.
MY SON, MY SON, WHAT HAVE YE DONE. Directed by Werner Herzog, produced by David Lynch, this offbeat hostage drama may be many things – but we know it’ll be weird! Herzog has two films at the Festival, also turning up with the Bad Lieutenant sequel.
POLICE, ADJECTIVE. Everyone’s talking about this dry, sardonic Romanian comedy, following an undercover cop carrying out surveillance in a bleak post-Communist town. From the director of 12:08 East of Bucharest.
A SERIOUS MAN. It’s the latest from the Coen Brothers – and not much is known (it’s a world premiere) but it’s said to be their most personal film, following a harried family man in late-60s Minnesota (where the Brothers grew up). Satisfaction guaranteed.
THE TIME THAT REMAINS. A Palestinian epic, spanning the years from 1948 to the present. “Imagine a film chronicling the lives and hardships of Palestinians who were branded ‘Israeli-Arabs’, living as a minority in their own homeland,” says the Festival description. “Now imagine it as a comedy.” Inconceivable!
UP IN THE AIR. George Clooney is a “career transition consultant” – basically, someone who fires other people for a living – in this much-anticipated corporate comedy; directed by Jason Reitman, who made Juno.
THE WHITE RIBBON. Fear and loathing in a small German village in the early 20th century – a place where obedience is prized, Fascist values are taught, and children suffer. Michael Haneke’s chilling drama – shot in gleaming black-and-white – won the Golden Palm at Cannes.
