Rating of
2.5/4
Tries hard but left with an average Film
hawkeye6287 - wrote on 07/19/09
This film suffers from trying to be all things to all people, and as a result fails to be anything at all. That is not to say it is a terrible film, but it reeks of mediocrity.
One of the main problems is with Christian Bale's character. Bale's FBI agent is given too much screen time for the negligible charcter development he receieves. For all the screen time we know next to nothing about him nor do we really care if he catches Depp or not.
The same can be said of Depps Character - notorious bank robber John Dillinger. At no point do you ever really care if he lives dies, succeeds or fails. Now in some films this doesn;t matter, but the film seems to make alot of effort in trying to develop Dillinger as a romantic at heart, smooth, yet ruthless when he has to be, cold hearted killer etc. As you can tell by the list of character traits just listed you never really know what to make of him and instead of a deep and engaging personality you are left watching a character it is almost impossible to form clear opinions or emotions about.
Perhaps if Bale's character had been given alot less screen time so as to have allowed more to flesh out Depps role it might have worked. As a result you never feel drawn to support either character at all, and are left all to ambivalent as to where the film takes them.
Interestingly both Bale and Depp do a good job with what they have been given, but especially with Depp you feel he is trying to hard to make something of a character who it seems even his acting talents couldn't get a grip on.
On top of trying to make Dillinger in too complex a character without success, the film as a whole fails to thouroughly please as a Crime, Action or Romance picture instead falling into a dissapointing mix of all three.
Like I said this is no way a terrible film some of the action scenes are great to watch, and there are some genuinely funny lines and others that would have been classic lines if they had been delivered from better written characters (Depps Coffee line for those who have seen the film). But all in all the film tries to do too much and is left unrewarded for it efforts as we are left watching a distinctly average film.
