Michael Mann is back with a period biopic that chronicles the life of John Dillinger in his glory days as a criminal and the results are superb technically but it is missing that special something to make it an absolutely amazing film.
Now, what is that special something? I don’t know. But as we pick up our film and follow Dillinger from just after his turn in prison and up until his death we never get that twinge that this film is amazing. With that said, it is almost flawless everywhere you turn. The costumes, cinematography, the performances, the direction, the pacing, it is all great and one can’t really find a complaint with the movie, it was just missing something.
Paired with the heists and romance in Dillinger’s life on the run is the pursuit of enemy number one of the depression era U.S. by Melvin Purvis and J. Edgar Hoover and the beginnings of the F.B.I. Divided up about 70-30 between Dillinger and F.B.I. the film is about the larger than life Dillinger at its core. But the looks into the rise of the F.B.I. is just as engaging and compelling, especially since much of the time we follow them we are thrown into the thick of an investigation on the edge of a shoot out. [Read more...]