I posted this review the night I saw the movie. At the time, this site didn't exist, so I posted it to facebook. What follows is a copy/paste of my original review of the movie - and my (BY FAR) worst of 2009. I apologize if the writing is somewhat lacking. I was ranting, for the most part.
I consider myself a movie fan more so than a film fan. Here's how I see it. I've got friends who are fans of film. The movie needs to have some Oscar-worthy aspect to it, or its not worth seeing. Movies like Wolverine, Transformers, and the Star Wars prequels are beneath them. If it's not artistic in some way, it's terrible. Then there are the people like me; movie fans. I love all movies. We love "terrible" big-budget movies that have no plot, terribly written dialogue, and are generally only there to provide us with some escapism. However, we also like the Oscar films, films that were made specifically as art. No movie is beneath us; we can appreciate all. Generally, I really like all movies.
I have at least liked every single movie I've ever seen. With three exceptions. I hate three movies with my entire being. One is The Seeker. I hate it because not only is it terrible shot, edited, scored, acted, set; it also is the single worst adaptation I have ever ever seen. I love the Dark is Rising series and to see it reduced to this drivel was truly sad. I don't mind changes in adaptations. I thought the Harry Potter movies were pretty good adaptations considering how large the books are. But this. Ugh. They invented a twin brother for the main character that he didn't know he had until the end of the movie. Ridiculous. The second movie I hate is Rent. I love musicals, but I couldn't stand Rent. I took it back to blockbuster about half-way through. The third movie I hate is Public Enemies.
I'll start with what's good in this movie. Bale and Depp do a perfectly passable job in their roles. In fact, the entire cast does. No one really wowed me in terms of acting ability, but everyone held their accents for the most part (Considering Bale is Welsh, holding the Southern was pretty good), and I believed some of the motivations. The violence is this movie is fairly heavy. Not that there's a whole lot of it, mostly gun fights. But, they are accurate gun fights. When someone is shot in the chest, they don't instantly die like every other movie. But along with that accuracy comes seeing chests with large gaping meat-holes with pretty copious amounts of blood. Now, I don't mind that. I can appreciate the authenticity. So that was good.
Now, let's talk about what was bad. Every. Single. Thing. Else. I don't really know where to being, so I'll pretty much just rant. This movie felt like an amateur movie shot with a webcam, recorded audio in a living room or on set, quickly editing on Windows Movie Maker and uploaded to Youtube. This movie was shot with High-Def cameras! I can't understand how the quality of the film is so so bad. Most shots never used a steady-cam and as such are constantly in a swaying motion. (Kind of like in Blair Witch or Cloverfield, only they MEANT to do it). When the camera pans, even slowly, EVERYTHING in the shot because ridiculously blurry. Things only look sharp if the camera is NOT moving, which is rare.
The picture quality of the film itself is so inconsistent that it literally grated against my nerves to watch. The opening shot of a penitentiary in 1933 looked great. High quality film. The next shot of a car pulling up looked like one of those History Channel historical recreations, or when America's Most Wanted does a recreation. This continued through out the film and reached its pinnacle of badness in a shoot out in the woods at a inn. I felt like I was watching a crappy television recreation of what might have been a cool event. After about 1/3 of the way through the movie, the film quality remains consistently bad. I didn't pay to watch TV. I paid for a movie.
Michael Mann's direction style in this movie was really hard to watch. He likes his extreme facial closeups, preferring 15 second long shots of a single facial expression. There's one scene in which Depp is in a jail cell and Bale walks in for the first face to face confrontation. Near the end of the scene, there is a shot over Depp's right shoulder (extreme closeup on Depp's hair line, which takes up roughly 1/3 of the screen) with Bale seen on the other side of the bars. Bale walks to his right placing his character squarely behind Depp's blurred scalp for the rest of the dialogue! I'm serious! For at least 30 seconds of the conversation, the only thing on screen is the backside of Depp's head; and it's blurry. Really Michael Mann? Really?
Onto audio. I suppose the score was passable, but certainly not memorable. The recorded dialogue was ABHORRENT. I do not understand how this passed as a final product. In a single dialogue scene between two characters, with camera changes as each character talks to the other, one characters voice was obviously recorded in post at a studio. It was clean, proper volumes, understandable. The seconds voice seemed to be the on-set audio. There's background white noise, it is significantly quieter and much harder to understand. This inconsistency spans the entire movie and gave me a head ache. Annoyingly terrible.
Now for the story. I have no idea why the public liked Dillinger. I know they did, but why? I was presented with absolutely NO reason in this film to like him as a Robin Hood character. Or really even to like him at all. The story arch was like this: Bale's character is after Depp. Somewhere along the line Baby Face Nelson shows up. That's about all I know. Dani and I were both confused several times in the plot, as I watched scenes having absolutely NO idea where we were or why. I've never had that in a movie before. I was shocked. You will not understand the smaller parts of the plot. Either the dialogue is too quiet or the accents too thick to understand.
This movie honestly feels like those production reels of unfinished scenes you see on DVD special features. I don't know how this got passed of as a final product. The ONLY thing I can figure is that it was an intentional choice. I can't figure out why, but that HAS to be it.
I hate this movie. Hate it hate it hate it. It is a 2.5 hour waste of your time. Do not go see it. The worst part of this? It's getting decent reviews AND on imdb.com forums for it, people are calling for a best picture nomination. WHAT?! If you've seen it, feel free to reply. I'd like to see your thoughts, either for the movie, or against it.
For the first time in my life I had truly regretted paying to see a movie in a theater. Thanks Michael Mann.
-Kris
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