DVD
Upcoming Release Calendar
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Best / Worst of the Decade
Recent DVD/Video Releases
60
9
xx
Across the Hall
56
Adam
37
Amelia
73
Amreeka
35
Babysitters, The
70
Big Fan
57
Boys Are Back, The
81
Bright Star
71
Bronson
60
Brothers at War
55
Brothers Bloom, The
45
Burning Plain, The
xx
Carriers
64
Che
57
Chelsea on the Rocks
66
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
23
Couples Retreat
54
Dare
68
Departures
19
Downloading Nancy
55
Endgame
39
Fame
30
Final Destination, The
27
Gamer
50
Give Me Your Hand
46
Halloween II
73
House of the Devil, The
94
Hurt Locker, The
55
I Can Do Bad All By Myself
17
I Hate Valentine's Day
26
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
83
In the Loop
58
Invention of Lying, The
47
Jennifer's Body
41
Little Ashes
80
Lorna's Silence
33
Love Happens
67
Michael Jackson's This Is It
xx
Ministers, The
67
Moon
59
More Than a Game
49
New York, I Love You
66
No Impact Man
47
Ong Bak 2: The Beginning
28
Pandorum
68
Paranormal Activity
85
Passing Strange
63
Perfect Getaway, A
44
Peter and Vandy
54
Pontypool
35
Post Grad
30
Saw VI
79
Serious Man, A
36
Serious Moonlight
76
Soul Power
40
Spiral
39
St. Trinian's
33
Stepfather, The
45
Surrogates
47
Time Traveler's Wife
43
Tru Loved
61
Trucker
47
Weather Girl
67
Whip It
28
Whiteout
73
Zombieland
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Public Enemies
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 35 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 180 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Crime | Drama | Suspense/Thriller
Written by:
Bryan Burrough (book "Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34")
Ann Biderman
Michael Mann
Ronan Bennett
Directed by: Michael Mann
Release Date:
Theatrical: July 1, 2009
DVD: December 8, 2009
Running Time: 140 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for gangster violence and some language
Starring Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, Giovanni Ribisi, Billy Crudup, Stephen Dorff, Rory Cochrane, and Channing Tatum
No one could stop Dillinger and his gang. No jail could hold him. His charm and audacious jailbreaks endeared him to almost everyone—from his girlfriend Billie Frechette to an American public who had no sympathy for the banks that had plunged the country into the Depression. But while the adventures of Dillinger's gang thrilled many, Hoover made Dillinger America's first Public Enemy Number One. (Universal Pictures)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Ali Collateral Heat Manhunter Miami Vice The Insider
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Empire Ian Nathan
Intelligent and challenging: Mann's crime epic could take two viewings to fully absorb, but it's worth every devoted minute.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Matthew Sorrento
This is the purest of American narratives, and this, indeed, is one of our finest storytellers.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Simultaneously an art film and a crime film, Mann's latest work may not give you a ton to hang on to emotionally, but the beauty and skill of the filmmaking keep you tightly in its grasp.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Scott Foundas
Mann's exhilarating movie exists in a state of perpetual forward motion.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Public Enemies comes at you like Dillinger did: all of a sudden. It's movie dynamite.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Without ever telling viewers what to think or how to feel, it raises more questions about the corruption of crime and crime fighting than any expose or thesis.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
This is a very good film, with Depp and Bale performances of brutal clarity. I'm trying to understand why it is not quite a great film. I think it may be because it deprives me of some stubborn need for closure.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
Michael Mann's extraordinary Public Enemies is an unusual sort of gangster picture, a near-impressionistic recreation of the last year in the life of one of American history's most notorious bank robbers.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
The picture throws off an aura of wistfulness, which may be Mann's acknowledgment that of course he can't re-create the past. The best he can do is to honor the idea of it, storybook-style, and to remind us that before there was gangsta, there were gangsters.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones
Cotillard doesn't look part Native American or sound like a Thirties Chicago moll, but damned if she isn't a sight and sound to behold. Whatever her technical limitations, she rises above them to breathe a flesh, blood, and battered verisimilitude into the part. You can't tear your eyes off her, any more than you can Mann's flawed but still engrossing picture.
Read Full Review >Premiere Robert Calvert
This is better than your average bio-pic. The dynamic established between the motivation of Bale’s and Depp’s characters is really what makes this film. Kudos also go out to Channing Tatum as Pretty Boy Floyd.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
The problem here is that while some of Mann's work is overwhelmingly great, the sum of it simply never compels.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
If Public Enemies lacks anything, it's something audiences can't legitimately expect to find: a certain EXTRA something.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
It's quite engaging. It is competently constructed and often compelling, but it will not be mentioned in the same breath as some of its classic predecessors.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
A welcome adult alternative to summer's sophomoric blockbusters. The only transforming going on here is actors skillfully taking on roles of '30s-era gangsters and lawmen.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
It's a fascinating bundle of contradictions -- authentic in a million details, deeply romanticized in others. Cool, calm and collected, this is more love story than gangster picture.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
Mann excels at staging the chaotic bank jobs and bloody shootouts that were just a day at the office for Dillinger, but even at 140 minutes the movie is so dense with incident that there isn't much room for cultural comment or character development.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
Public Enemies has incidental pleasures (its hi-def video palette is fascinatingly weird), but it’s only Depp’s sense of fun that keeps it from being a period gangster museum piece.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Marvelously detailed and meticulously crafted, an elegant evocation of Depression-era America and its fascination with crime. What the movie lacks is any sense of elation--it’s joyless by choice.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Could have used a lot more grit. Without it, we're left with a crime movie fantasia that slips all too easily into the ether.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
As filmmaker Michael Mann takes pains to emphasize in his handsome, underheated gangster drama Public Enemies, the gent may have been murderous, but he had style.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
Yet, for all its skill, Public Enemies is not quite a great movie. There’s something missing--a sense of urgency and discovery, a more complicated narrative path, a shrewder, tougher sense of who John Dillinger is.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Joe Neumaier
You see the spark of 'this is cool!,' but you don't sense a purpose. The underconceived Public Enemies suffers from that lack of drive, though Johnny Depp is so urgent and charismatic as John Dillinger, he provides enough firepower to make the film legit.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
Mann reduces a legendary game of cat-and-mouse to the size of a standard police procedural. His refusal to mythologize Dillinger’s exploits is audacious, but too much of Public Enemies feels disappointingly smaller than life.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
The parts, in other words, promise a brilliant whole. So why is this movie one of the signal disappointments of the year? You have to go back to the basics: Public Enemies has everything going for it except a reason and a script.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
Perhaps the most regrettable crime here is the way that Mann, trying to do too much, robs himself of a great opportunity. Here was a chance to capture the drama of the Thirties.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
The film lacks the juice promised by the teaming of such extraordinary filmmakers with a cast as large as a Hooverville encampment.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Oddly, too, the film is somewhat shortchanged by its great star, Johnny Depp, who disappointingly has chosen to play Dillinger as self-consciously cool rather than earthy and gregarious.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
It lacks overall focus, and at the end you may have a question for Michael Mann: Why'dyou bother? [July 6, 2009, p.59]
Slate Dana Stevens
It's like spending an afternoon--a long one--at a beautifully lit wax-museum display inspired by earlier gangster movies.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Dan Zak
It's also a double-barreled bummer. There's no excitement in the bank-robbing, no thrill of the chase, no emotion over justice served or thwarted. Depp's Dillinger is neither charming nor despicable, nor does he occupy that delicious gray area between the two. His spree unspools dispassionately, cold as a Colt .380.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.3 (out of 10) based on 180 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Rita gave it a3:
All style, no substance. Paper thin characters. A long music video passing itself off as a movie.
rizzeh gave it a2:
Sound and cinematography were horrible. Cast was wasted. Plot was uninteresting and characters underdeveloped. Never have I preferred cleaning a litter box to watching a Michael Mann or Johnny Depp movie... but here we are! Seriously Metacritic?? A score of 70 seems to be way off. I think it's time to review your system.
MiKE gave it a0:
What a bore of a movie!!!! Very dull action, felt like a low buget movie. AVOID!
Joe M gave it a9:
Public Enemies is a fantastic film that requires multiple viewings to really appreciate the internal battle that these characters are facing. This is Michael Mann at the top of his form, with his spectacular use of HD to give the film a cutting edge yet old school feel, Depp is amazing and the supporting cast is also great, the one minor flaw that this film has is that you never really end up caring for christian bales character who is not in it a ton but enough to be noticeable. In the end this is a must see film that has one of the best endings in recent memory.
Village Green gave it a3:
Are you kidding me? The Characters are as flat and uninteresting as the way the film looked. An absolute overrated waste of time. Seriously, I am not kidding, if you go into this film with only an once of criticism you will come out let down.
Ritchie Y gave it a0:
Less interesting than Transformers would be if you took the robots out.
viktor g gave it a6:
I like very much Depp´s interpretations, but in this movie. I liked more the second part of the movie, but i bored a lot.