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Public Enemies



A Michael Mann film

Plot (Spoiler Alert)


In the year 1933, FBI agent Melvin Purvis has just caught and killed bank robber Charles Floyd, and has been promoted to lead the hunt for notorious bank robber John Dillinger.

In between a series of bank robberies, John Dillinger busts some of his men out of prison and then meets a lovely woman named Billie Frechette at a restaurant. Johnny is truthful about who he really is when Billie asks him what he does for a living. Billie is amazed that he has told her the truth, but John seems to think a lot of her. Johnny woos Billie with a fur coat that he bought for her.

Word spreads that John Dillinger is wanted dead or alive. Billie worries about Johnny’s life. She doesn’t want to be there when he gets killed. John promises that he’ll die of old age with her next to him and she is calm after that. But shortly after that the police find him in Tucson, Arizona and arrest him along with his gang.

Dillinger is flown to Indiana to await execution. He and another inmate escape the Lake County Jail in Crown Point by fooling guards with a wooden gun. Dillinger plans to make one more robbery that will pay enough for both Billie and him to escape together. The gang stay at Little Bohemia Lodge in Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin after a robbery. Purvis and his men apprehend one of the gang members and torture him to learn the gang’s location. They show up at the lodge and open fire on the place. A lot of the gang members get killed, but John Dillinger escapes.

Johnny then goes to Chicago to pick up Billie. The police are watching her, but she finds a way to sneak past them and is reunited with Johnny. Billie makes a quick stop into the tavern, but gets caught by police and is held for questioning to find out where Dillinger is. They demand to know where he is, but what they don’t know is that John Dillinger was standing right there in front of them. They just didn’t notice him. Johnny is devastated for Billie. He gets a letter saying she is too well guarded so he should stay away and will be out of prison in two years.

Shortly after Dillinger agrees to do a train robbery. Someone close to Dillinger, Anna Sage, is willing to set up him up and give him to the FB. She is a foreigner in the U.S. illegally, so they will allow her to stay in exchange for giving up Dillinger. Johnny plans to take Anna and Polly Hamilton to the movie, “Manhattan Melodrama” that night. The FBI is waiting for Dillinger to leave the theater. After the movie is over, Johnny and Polly walk out the theater. One of the men goes after Johnny with a gun. Johnny feels somethings not right. He turns around and sees a guy pointing a gun at him. Dillinger recognizes the man who arrested Billie. Dillinger tries to reach for his gun, but FBI agent Charles Winstead shoots Dillinger in the head before he has a chance to pull the gun out of his pocket. Johnny is down on the ground trying to say something. Winstead puts his ear next to Dillinger trying to hear his last words. Dillinger is no more after that.

Winstead goes to see Billie Frechette while she is still incarcerated and to tell her that Johnny’s dying words were “Bye Bye Black Bird”. Billie sheds a tear. Billie was released from prison in 1936 and lived the rest of her life in Wisconsin.



Blaine: What I like about “Public Enemies” is what Michael Mann and his team did to make it with the cinematography, the editing work, some of the stunt work and the sets.

Johnny Depp has taken a few serious roles in his career and taking on the role of John Dillinger is one of his bests even though I wasn’t 100% impressed with a performance like this, but what I am impressed with is the scene after the police take his woman Billie Frechette away and because he is depressed that the woman he loves has been taken away by the police. I’ve never seen Johnny Depp show that kind expression before in any of his other movies.

That scene also shows that John Dillinger does care for Billie possibly more than himself because he gets out of the car and is in plain sight. John Dillinger has lost the men from his gang and now the woman he loves and things are going downhill for him.

My dad pointed out that he likes the shot at the beginning of the film when John Dillinger is trying to hold onto Walter Dietrich from the side as the car is moving, but has to let him go because he’s dead. It is cool the it is shot from a high angle.

When Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) is hunting down Pretty Boy Floyd, played by Channing Tatum, I like how it cuts from behind Melvin's back to a close up of his hand firing the rifle to a side shot of him cocking the rifle. Another shot of Christian Bale in the scene is shot from a low angle and his hand in front of his face is out of focus. It’s sharply focused on his eyes and his one eye is seen from behind the out of focus gun.

Another great scene is when the FBI shows up at Little Bohemia Lodge, where Dillinger and his gang are staying at, and the FBI shoots at the building while the gang shoots back at them. I like how it cuts back and forth and it’s all in the dark and you see the muzzle flash coming off of the machine guns (seen better at night).

Melvin is firing a shot gun and the gun fire is lighting up the shot.

There’s a scene in the movie where Anna Sage meets with Melvin Purvis to discuss the deal of turning over John Dillinger in order for her to stay in America. Melvin is up front and Anna sitting in the back and there’s one shot where the camera turns to whomever talks and on Melvin’s side I can see Anna’s reflection in the car window behind him and what I would have done is instead of turning left and right, I would have had the camera focus on Anna’s reflection whenever she would talk and then put the focus back on Melvin. That is what came to my mind when I first saw that shot.

John Dillinger's death location is Lincoln Avenue, on Chicago’s North Side and in the film that’s the real life street where he was shot and killed. That street has changed a lot since 1934. It is now gentrified to our time. There were old photos of what it looked like back in 1934, so the production team used those photos and rebuilt the street and they had help from the city people to make it look like 1934 again. And Johnny Depp’s John Dillinger lands exactly where the real John Dillinger landed. That really impresses me that some of the locations they shot for “Public Enemies” are the real life spots where these historical figures were. The jail cell in Crown Point Indiana, the shoot out at Little Bohemia Lodge restaurant and Biograph Theatre are the original locations in this movie. It was challenging to make 1934 be alive as vivid, as complex and as detailed is it should be.

Charles Winstead, the man who shot and killed Dillinger goes to see Billie Frechette to tell her that Johnny’s last words were “Bye Bye Black Bird” and that’s the name of the song they danced to when they first met and it’s also kind of like she was Johnny’s black bird and he wants to tell her fair well during his last amounts of breath.

My rating on “Public Enemies” is four out of five.











Cinematography Shots on Page 2