Daily Archives: July 21, 2009
Depp and Mann Fued Created Public Enemies Mess
As the title might suggest, thinks have got pretty bad for director Michael Mann and lead actor Johnny Depp over their clanger of a blockbuster Public Enemies. During production the two key figures on set were only communicating through a studio exec, as Depp seethed at Mann’s ‘chaotic’ film making style.
After viewing the final product, although I was not on set, I would have to take Depp’s side. The final product was quite frankly shocking. From a director who had put togther some entertaining and stylish flicks such as Last of Mohicans, Heat, Ali and Collatoral, this was a real mess. None of his films are masterpieces, but he has shown that he can work with big names and get the job done.
With Mohicans, Mann proved that he could put together a period piece with some complex battle scenes. I don’t know whether he got bored with standard cinematic deep focus period techniques or if he wanted to try something new, but he picked the wrong film to do it with. Mann is staring down the barrel as Public Enemies drags itself over the 70mill mark bearing the wieght of a 100mill price tag.
The problem is that it really didn’t look like a 100mill flick. The shadow happy lighting and shallow focus from the tight end gave us little hints we were in the 1930s. The film was effectively a biop of John Dillinger and if Mann was trying to represent the gritty realism by adopting a Cassavettes style, actor leading camera blend of performance enhancing depth of field with reaction shot focus pulls, it did not work.
The autopsy of this freakish alien of visual style has to begin with the script… it was terrible. They managed to make Depp boring. Mann took co-credit for this abomination with Ronan Bennett, who has mainly written for TV although penned Face in ’97 which was passable and the Stephen Fry adaptation Lucky Break. It was a series of cliches and paradoxes which left Depp slightly confused as to why he was on screen.
Depp under Burton would have been searching within these terrible lines for a reason. He would have deduced that with the entire country trying to capture Dillinger he would be paranoid in the extreme, he would be reliant on cliches to get him through conversations, he would have had an edge. The poor script would have been turned inside out to create something interesting.
