Allen's review is here. I wanted to like this movie, I really did. And the acting and technical film-making were decent. The biggest problem with the movie is that everything is flat and historical. There is no story. It's a breakout, then a robbery, then a chase, rinse, and repeat, until everyone is dead.
Sure, they try to shoehorn a romance in there, but it's really contrived (ask yourself why he's obsessed with her) and, honestly, their dialogue is so poetic and scripted it rings false. So what you're left with is standard cops and robbers where most of the characters are completely expendable. It's Bale's realistic and uninteresting Purvis versus Depp's overly stylistic and backgroundless Dillinger ("his daddy hit him, so he became the best bank robber ever" doesn't cut it).
Simply put, there needed to be less action and more reasons. I need to know why these characters do what they do, or I can't appreciate this piece as anything more than a history lesson. For that reason, Public Enemies is just not worth seeing -- unless you have to write a term paper on John Dillinger.
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