Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
:: Public Enemies ::
by William the Bloody
John Dillinger, notorious bank robber has just busted himself and his buddies from prison and it's time to let the games begin. Dillinger loves robbing banks with his friends, the living day to day, not knowing what tomorrow will bring and enjoys a cult hero status especially in Chicago. In the Great Depression, American citizens are hit by hard times and blame the banks and see Dillinger as just the guy to take them down a peg, and Al Capone admired their guts and offered them safe house. J. Edgar Hoover, head of the Bureau of Investigation, is furious that this brazen outlaw has not only been at large for so long and been able to escape prison but also that he his held in such high regard by the public and appoints a new man, Melvin Purvis, to head a squad aimed specifically at bringing Dillinger and his friends down. While Purvis may be a talented lawman, he soon learns that he will need a special team and new tactics to catch the elusive Dillinger.
The Good: I just love true crime and I also love period pieces. Put them together and what've you got? Something fun to watch, that's what! The wardrobe, the cars, ....the guns of the period are so distinct and well, even classy that I never get tired of looking at them. Everyone looks dapper in a suit and hat, don't they? The film succeeded in getting across certain points about Dillinger's character that helped create his folk-hero status, such as not robbing citizens and only going after banks, taking hostages but taking care never to really hurt anyone of the public whenever possible. They also captured Hoover's increasing hatred for the Dillinger gang. I really do like films that show someone outsmarting their pursuer, and this film certainly has much of that. And fairly true to history, Dillinger liked to be a smug and cocky bastard to the lawmen. Man, I loved their recreation of the Dillinger-Estill-Holley photo! I really have to applaud the filmmakers for actually going to the Little Bohemia Lodge for the filming of that sequence! Talk about filming on location! Oh and Johnny Depp really looks the part for Dillinger. I Couldn't think of anyone better other than digging up an unknown.
The Bad: This film is absolutely riddled with historical inaccuracies. Sure, some stuff they got down, but well, most of it is just not true and I can't stand it when Hollywood does that. Sure, it's not the historical crime bullshit of Black Dahlia standards by any means, but there were some things I simply cannot look past. I mean, for starters, the introduction of the Bureau's pursuit of Dillinger is ALL WRONG. The Bureau didn't come into it until AFTER he escaped from Crown Point, because he accidentally went across state lines in doing so, thus entering federal jurisdiction. The movie would have you believe that they were introduced sooner. Also, they show Purvis shooting Pretty Boy Floyd at the beginning of the movie and in real life Floyd died AFTER Dillinger and was shot by local law enforcement, though Purvis I believe was there. Historical inaccuracies aside, the film seemed to lack focus to me. It was about Dillinger, Purvis and the pursuit, but not about any one piece enough for you to latch onto any one aspect of it. We don't really get much information on Purvis or any real background on Dillinger prior to the events depicted in the film (and even the crime he says he committed that got him put in prison for the first time where he met bank robbers is historically inaccurate), so it just goes back and forth and I didn't know who I supposed to like or what I was supposed to care about. Did they make this movie hoping the audience would already know the basics behind the main characters or was it just bad editing? Much of the acting really came off as wooden. Normally I love Johnny Depp and Christian Bale in just about anything they do, but here they felt very stiff and dull. Granted, I don't know much about Dillinger or Purvis's mannerisms and maybe the actors thoroughly researched them and found out that's how they really were, but I would have liked it to be a little livelier in places.
Overall, I didn't hate it, but it hardly lived up to expectations. With a cast like this, I was hoping for something great and instead got yet another inaccurate historical crime... thing. I don't even know if drama is what I'd call it. Like I said, it was hard to pinpoint exactly what this film is supposed to be about. Had they had a stronger, more definitive focus on Dillinger, there are loads more interesting things they could have included (he was reported to have phoned the police and ridicule them from time to time, for example, and I think he was involved in about 10 bank heists, for one of which they started a rumour about Hollywood filming a movie so passers by assumed their robbery was part of this nonexistent film) instead of only really depicting the infamous Dillinger trifecta: His escape from Crown Point, the Little Bohemia shoot out and his demise outside of a movie theater (Everybody knows these things! Why not show us something most Dillinger movies don't?). So, this movie didn't completely suck, but it didn't do anything particularly good either.
C+
