public enemy

the new film has some lovely moments, mostly with Depp and the young actress playing Billie Frechette. Depp can portray deep menscheness with sensitivity to burn. maybe like rudolph valentino used to do. he can smolder alright.
yet the film itself is moribund. with the exception of Depp and Marion Cotillard who plays Billie.
The New Yorker magazine gave faint praise to the director Michael Mann, but were perhaps too kind to him on this endeavor.
Period films have a way of being like a dead thing.
Not even the period details were much fun here. The overly dark look of the film obliterated detail.
The pace was deadly slow when compared with its 1931 James Cagney incarnation:
I don't want to compare Depp to Cagney because that would not be fair somehow, but as for Michael Mann choosing to "remake" such a classic gangster pic, i realize that the stories are different, yet the same title begs comparison to the original film which is so much zestier than this latest film. With much less technology, how did directors like Michael Curtiz and William Wellman create such magnetic, fantastical, supra realistic, larger, shinier and more sparkling than real life films? They held you mesmerized with magical cinematography, action and acting. (Because technology is no substitute for art.)
Some people say that Depp is too pretty to be a gangster, but look at Jimmy Cagney here, was ever there a prettier lad? And yet he could come across with a character so complex and charismatic that nary an actor nowadays could touch his gangster bonafides. dangerous, he was.