It was a movie weekend for my hubby and I; we took in two flicks, the second being Public Enemy.  At Transformers the night before we mentioned to Tanya and Kent that we were thinking of going to see this.  Of all the movies coming out this summer, this was the one I was most excited about.  However, apparently Tanya’s friend said it wasn’t very good.  How could a movie with Johnny Depp and Christian Bale not be good?  I found it hard to beleive and could not go on word of mouth alone, needing to see for myself.   The verdict?

Meh.  (NOTE: SPOILERS AHEAD)

While I wouldn’t say it was bad, it really wasn’t as good as you would think it would be.  I would say that there was a lack of acting…there was never enough interaction between any of the characters to really develop a vested interest in caring about them or their relationships.  By the end of the movie, when Dillinger’s character is shot, I didn’t feel anything towards it happening, nor when the officer tells his girlfriend, Marion Cotillard’s character, what has happened.

With two such heavy weight actors I was going in practically salivating over the thought of these two going at each other in numerous, intense scenes.  Well, it never really materialized, with only one scene of the two together. The only two moments that really lived up to the hype were when John Dillinger is taken to jail and is charming the press (Johnny at his best) and then the one scene where he is interacting with Melvin Purvis (Bale’s character).  Other than that, there was nothing to really hang on to.  The shoot out scenes were great but were hard to watch as the camera work was really shaky and unsteady and kind of reminded us of the Blair Witch Project.

Maybe the movie was actually decent but I just hyped it up too much in my mind?  Either way, big disappointment for me as the movie had tons of potential.  It ran long in length, too, so by the end I was looking at my watch wondering how much longer until the end.  What a waste.

Tanya: My friend Ali is usually pretty good with her taste in movies and when she said Public Enemies was a disappointment I wasn’t sure if she lost her touch or not. Guess she’s still got it. I’d like to see this one because of the story, but I’ll wait to rent – maybe it’ll come into the library

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