A Summer Movie's Chances: 'Public Enemies'

Posted by Michael Dance

In general, summer movies don't get nominated for Best Picture -- even ones that really try to be nominated for Best Picture. Sure, Seabiscuit did. But Road to Perdition didn't, and neither did Cinderella Man, which disappointed outright at the box office, too.

Public Enemies doesn't seem to be going for that kind of awards prestige. The movie was born during the Writers Guild strike; at the time, there was a shortage of movies going into production, because most of the scripts circulating around Hollywood still needed rewrites and polishes and there were no writers to do it. The Public Enemies script, by director Michael Mann, Ronan Bennett, and Ann Biderman, was filmable, so Universal lured Johnny Depp and Christian Bale in fairly easily.

In other words, Universal wasn't looking for an Oscar movie when they made it. They were looking for something that could gross $100 million while they had a mediocre upcoming slate: none of their other summer movies this year (including Bruno and Funny People) are Harry Potter-style sure bets, and one, Land of the Lost, already flopped. So of course they're going to market a solid Depp/Bale gangster movie as a summer event and not a prestige film.

That said, some of the biggest Oscar movies are accidents -- nobody thought The Lord of the Rings movies would be Best Picture contenders until Fellowship of the Ring came out, and The Departed's entire Oscar strategy was to publicly claim it was a popcorn movie that wasn't going after any awards (it won Picture, Director, Screenplay, and Editing). So does Public Enemies have a chance? I've seen it, so I feel at least somewhat qualified to ruminate.

The movie looks beautiful. The period details seem perfect (everything looks a little too clean, actually, but hey this is Hollywood) and the wardrobe is slick. So Art Direction and Costume Design? I could definitely get behind those (although more exaggerated costumes later this year might overtake it in that category).

Also? Film Editing. Mann's Collateral was nominated for it, and there's no reason to believe Public Enemies couldn't be, either. Sure, Mann uses some of his shaky-cam style, but in general, all the action in the movie is actually coherent. (No small task; if you've seen Transformers 2 you know what I mean.)

The one area I think will really hurt Public Enemies is acting. Everybody does a good job, but none of the characters are fully-developed enough for anybody to really bite into. Thematically, it's a story about men that are self-centered and overconfident -- Depp's John Dillinger is all bravado, and Bale's Melvin Purvis is all emotionally-stunted resolve. Marion Cotillard is lovely, but her accent fades in and out. (Or maybe that's how a French/American/Native American accent sounds -- either way, it's slightly distracting.)

Overall, it's a very solid action movie that people will get their money's worth from, but I don't think it'll cross over into major awards contention. I'm picturing a $120 million box office haul, plus Editing and Art Direction nominations.

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A Summer Movie's Chances: 'Public Enemies'

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