Michael Mann's new gangster retrospective is a healthy reminder of just how close we are to our worst even when we're at our best.
Public Enemies is set to be another well-remembered offering from the director who brought cinema goers The Insider, Ali, Collateral and The Aviator (which is no small thing considering he also delivered Miami Vice, The Kingdom and Hancock). In Public Enemies Mann explores the real-life love affair America had with gangsters in the 20th century, and in so doing raises moral questions for viewers in the 21st.
The film is set in the 1930s during which the FBI names notorious bank robber John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) 'Public Enemy No.1'. Dillinger is portrayed as a charismatic character who enamored the public with his glamorous lifestyle and gentlemanly behaviour. He dresses in the finest fashions and is polite to the female tellers; crowds even line the road to cheer him after one of his several arrests. The 'Robin Hood' persona is given an extra polish when Dillinger spots a poor man eyeing a scattering of loose change in the middle of a robbery:
John Dillinger: [nodding at the money on the counter] That’s your money, mister?
Poor man: [nervously] Yes.
John Dillinger: We’re here for the bank’s money, not yours. Put it away.
The dour-faced Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), the agent charged with hunting down Dillinger, provides the contrast. Pressured by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup), the morally driven Purvis adopts increasingly immoral tactics to catch his elusive targets. The result is a thrilling chess game between Dillinger and Purvis as the former pursues his personal motto of "Everything - right now," while the latter attempts to bring the inflexible arm of justice to bear.
At its most basic level Public Enemies is a morality tale, writ large over the decadence of the 1920s and '30s. Johnny Depp makes an excellent Dillinger incapable of focusing on the consequences of his actions. "We’re having too good a time today. We ain’t thinking about tomorrow," he tells his love interest, Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard). Like many who have given themselves over to self-indulgence, the inevitability of their downfall is only visible to those close to them. The starting point for Christians hoping to pique the conscience of breezy friends is obvious. Those who live with no concern for a relationship with God now, can expect to be treated as those who have no relationship with Him when they finally meet, however glorious the ride to that point.
However the real moral force of the film lies in its dismissal of simplistic, humanistic concepts of good and evil. Dillinger's moments of grace make him hard to box. Meanwhile Mann shows Purvis and his fellow agents becoming every bit as brutal, even malicious as the worst gangsters they pursue. The title Public Enemies reflects the truth that for some citizens caught up in the pursuit of 'evil doers' the state can be just as dangerous as the criminals it is trying to protect them from. Public Enemies also questions the need for the justice system's 'necessary evils' by showing the effect they have on the agents and making a strong link between them and Purvis' eventual suicide. The director clearly wants his viewers to wrestle not only with the dangers of situational ethics, but whether humans can ever be free of the evil they can so righteously pursue.
Public Enemies was always going to be compared to that other benchmark gangster film, The Untouchables. For my part, the best connection between the two comes from the words of Treasury agent Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) who rails at a judge likely to let Al Capone slip through his fingers:
"The truth of the case is the man Capone is a killer and he will go free. There is only one way to deal with such men and that is hunt them down. I have foresworn myself, I have broken every law I swore to defend. I have become what I beheld and I am content that I have done right."
Both films underline the woeful state of secular justice and the human condition. Public Enemies illustrates not that there are good people and evil people, nor that good people can sometimes behave like evil people and visa versa, but that both are inseparable in every heart. Our best motivations can result in evil deeds and good deeds are tainted by bad motivations. For even ".when I want to do good, evil is right there with me." (Romans 7:21) Strong governments may be able to hold on to peace for a time, but we will need a greater saviour if we are going to purge our souls.
