Johnny Depp stars in Public Enemies

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Rating: 3/5

IF a complex computer were to direct, film and edit a Michael Mann movie entirely in CGI, it’s fair to say that Public Enemies would be the end result.

The picture is a stunning, pixel-perfect evocation of ­Depression-era gangsters and FBI agents: a world where speckless marble floors ­shimmer in the gun-light; where pure black roads run like ­Dulux paint slicks; and everything is crisp and clean. What we get is a sure-footed set-up, a classic screenwriting coda, vintage Mann, and a slight case of deja vu.

In fact, it follows his ­seminal 1995 film Heat ­almost exactly – the focus is on two men on opposite sides of the law. On one side is Christian Bale’s focused lawman Melvin Purvis, ­under the command of J Edgar Hoover. On the other is Johnny Depp’s wild-card bank robber John Dillinger, under the command of his impulses, his gal (a gorgeous Marion Cotillard) and not a whole lot else.

As with Heat, we are split between them. Neither one is vilified, nor championed. Bale’s clench-jawed Purvis (to be fair, when is Bale not clench-jawed? He probably reads bedtime stories like that) is resolute in his duties, but you sense it’s more about a job to get done rather his burning desire to do it. Depp is more restrained than usual, but he uses it well – as a cover to show the mania ever-ready to slip above the surface.

And Mann is careful to give context: you see it in the media scrum as ­Dillinger is about to stand trial, the press laughing at his quips like crush-struck schoolgirls; he is a star.

In short, the film is a stunning, well-oiled machine. Even the bank job digital camera shots that feel like a mis-step – jolting you out of the reality rather than sucking you in – aren’t a serious worry.

You can’t fault any of it. But it’s also hard to love any of it.The characters feel real, but that’s not the same as feeling true. We get well-intentioned nudges towards what drives them (Dillinger’s fear of losing people, Purvis’s struggles to gain them) but there’s something missing. The heart, magic and mystery that makes a film live, that holds you to your cinema seat that extra second when the lights go up.

Yet as well crafted as Public Enemies is, by the end, it only makes you want to stand.