Public Enemies review

Public Enemies: free but in chains.

A new Michael Mann film is always something for me to get excited about. Mann is a serious film maker with an unmistakable aesthetic; a pristine veneer covering a dark and tangled depth.

Much will be made of how we the viewer doesn’t get to know the characters much in the film. This is an old critique of Mann and his handling of the unfolding of a characters motives and history. And this critique is somewhat right but it is also not entirely the case, Mann shows much about his characters without telling much and it is this understated storytelling that can be missed whilst viewing images that are so meticulously constructed and stylised. What do we learn of Dillenger played by a dapper and steely Johnny Depp: his mother died when he was young, his father beat him, he grew up on a farm, he likes cars, baseball, whiskey, beautiful women, the company of others, expensive clothes, he likes to look handsome, he enjoys the movies and he is his own man. Quite a list then of things to learn about a character, but what quite that Dillenger broods over and is running from we don’t quite learn, perhaps it is the open desolate youth that he endured or is it that he knows the opportunities that the depression provided are beginning to wain and he must find a way out, a way to slip off the edge of the map, or is it perhaps that Dillenger simply doesn’t want to become one of the many victims of the depression that litter the streets in many of the films scenes?

Dillenger’s world is closing in on him, the law and the organised crime syndicates, both of which have no desire to have a free radical running around who has the courage to live out the dreams played out on the silver screen, are slowly but surely blocking off the roads that Dillinger once hurtled down. These, of course, are themes visited in various shades and from different angles in most of the Michael Mann films going as far back as The Thief; what does one do when the world around them impinges upon their freedom? It could be said that Mann is an auteur who interrogates the impact of the social contract

In the city a profuse of discussion, rumors and talk has oozed from the site of 76 Dean St in Soho, London: the site of of Fridays 12th of July's fire. The verbal coagulation of water and ash has spread forth on the lips of those who saw, heard and read about the fire (least us forget that thankfully no one was injured in the blaze and the worst that happened was that a fine Georgian building has been gutted) and the a babel of communication has been built on the site where only a facade precariously stood a few days ago.

Perhaps the grandest utterance from a pair of lips to be overheard is that this event was "The Great Fire of Soho". And perhaps it was, never before has a fire in Soho been so quickly reported with coverage and updates of the event sent out into the electronic community and back into the real world. "Great" being that this is one of the first fires that news of has been dispersed so quickly in real time and by citizen journalists

A spectacle was born that roamed the playpens of Twitter, Flickr and the blogosphere.