David Elliott on movies: ‘Public Enemies’

“Public Enemies”

Johnny Depp has been in movies that fall below his talent for so long that his fans need a battle cry: Give Johnny a great one! That Depp is the best thing in (and considerably better than) “Public Enemies” extends a tradition which needs to be broken.

He plays John Dillinger in Michael Mann’s fancy tombstone for Thirties gangster films. Dillinger was just 27 when he was shot down in 1934, but looked like an aging Bogart. Depp is 46 but still looks fairly boyish, and his version of the Indiana-born bank robber has the brisk, slippery grace of another Hoosier with the same initials, James Dean. Depp is the vital spring of this solemn movie, but this is basically a countdown to death and even more of a Depp charge could not overcome the ponderous fatalism.

There are fine old cars, machine guns and buildings weighty with Depression Era gravity (including the waiting room of Chicago’s Union Station, famously used in “The Untouchables”). But even periodic vocal steam from Billie Holiday can’t heat a story mostly concerned with setting up heists and ambushes. Mann has skill with violent set-pieces, and in a woodsy gun battle at night he approaches the rushing, visceral power of his “The Last of the Mohicans” (Stephen Graham’s Baby Face Nelson is like a crazed brave with a Tommy gun).

Many talents arrive as empty shell casings: Lili Taylor, Matt Craven, Stephen Dorff, Leelee Sobieski, Giovanni Ribisi. Tearing around recklessly, Dillinger barely develops relationships. Leading the G-men pursuit, Melvin Purvis (stiff Christian Bale) seems more worried by his pesty, pompous boss J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) than by Dillinger.

Dillinger has meager moments with his most loyal gun, Red (Jason Clarke). He barely connects with the Polish madam (Branka Katic) who betrays him on the fabled night (7-22-34 ) at Chicago’s Biograph Theater.

It is surprising to find that one of the tarts is a Dillinger girlfriend because the film has posed Billie Frechette as his One Great Love. Marion Cotillard (”La Vie en Rose”) is warmly alluring as Frechette, even though she is too smoothly urbane to be a girl recently arrived in Chicago after years on an Indian reservation. When she finally shows sexual heat, the cops burst in. Depp and Cotillard have match-up charms, yet the romance remains notional. Mann is clearly not a director of deathless love.

Among the striking faces is Stephen Lang as a hard agent from Texas. He growls the line everyone will remember: “John Dillinger ain’t goin’ to no Shirley Temple picture.” No, his last movie was “Manhattan Melodrama” starring Clark Gable, Myrna Loy and William Powell, and you will also remember how Depp’s charisma holds its own with those icons of luminous black and white. (Rated R) ★★

“The End of the Line”

President Obama needs more on his plate. So let’s give him a heaping slab of tuna, and sprinkle it with Rupert Murray’s “The End of the Line.” This excellent documentary is about the gross over-fishing which is sending many species into a death spiral. The virtual extermination of the North Atlantic cod was a wake-up call mostly ignored, and there are the usual culprits: human gluttony, human greed, human ability to duck the moral tab.

According to very articulate experts in this disturbing film, industrial fishing (which even resorts to scraping the sea bottom, using a machine invented by some Capt. Nemo from hell) is ruining ecologies and shattering the food chain. Tossing back many creatures as dead trash, the big boats feed the sushi set and global seafood mania. In essence, a huge, global biz has gone dynamite fishing.

This must-see states that we have maybe 30 years (tops) to turn the tide. Less than 1 per cent of the ocean is protected. Existing laws need to be extended and enforced. Traditional fishermen are among the endangered, and if we foul-up we better develop a taste for worms, since their days as fish bait will be over. For more data: www.endoftheline.com. (Opens July 10 at Landmark Ken Cinema; unrated) ★★★★

“The Girl from Monaco”

Fabrice Luchini is like a pin-faced mouse who will dart over and steal your cheese, yet he can be suave (”Beaumarchais the Scoundrel”) and exquisitely sinister (”On Guard”). The little man’s brisk, cutting voice seems to be his main appeal to tall Audrey (Louise Bourgoin), a blonde weather girl and storm front of sexuality in “The Girl From Monaco.” It helps that Bertrand (Luchini) is an elite lawyer handling Monte Carlo’s big murder case, for Audrey is totally on the make and not above comparing herself to two martyred princesses, Diana and Grace.

Audrey has a body that almost excuses her party-tart clothes and sub-Club Med friends. Much like Tom Ewell hoping to scale Mt. Marilyn in “The Seven Year-Itch” Bertrand is wowed. The added sizzle is his bodyguard (Roschdy Zem), a secretive and virile totem who sends ambivalent signals about Bertrand cutting loose. Does it help Anne Fontaine’s amusingly tricky film that Zem looks like a more rugged, jaded Barack Obama?

The White House will not be showing this blithe French diversion, though the Big O might like its oo-la-la. I could see where it was going before a prior engagement made me miss the last twist or two. But I was entertained by the three actors, the Riviera settings and Fontaine’s smooth fluency, so I will catch up. (Opens at a Landmark theater; rated R) ★★★

STARS: FOUR: excellent, THREE: worthy, TWO: involving, ONE: dud, ZERO: nada

NEWS Etc.

Eggrolls, anyone?: So the Oscars have returned to very old form and doubled the number of Best Film nominees to ten. When Academy prez Sid Ganis said that last year’s omission of “The Dark Knight” was a factor, that was the clue: get more money machines into the gilded circle, to please the studios, producers and agents who top the biz. Of course, this means even more of a feeding frenzy during Oscar season, but will it help or hurt strong indies and foreign films that often lack “Slumdog” sentiment and promo budgets? Elke Sommer was surely prophetic in 1966’s “The Oscar” “Take one from column A, and two from column B, you get eggroll either way.”

Still riding: Forty years ago, “Easy Rider” fired up its hogs and headed east, as two hippie drug dealers peeled open beautiful but uneasy vistas of America. The film sparked a Hollywood youth boom that flopped (but churned up loads of talent), enjoyed a huge profit ratio, gave director Dennis Hopper and co-star/writer Peter Fonda their signature roles, and lifted Jack Nicholson from pulp status to lasting stardom. A new print cycles into the Ken Cinema tomorrow (Friday) for a week, and if you have never heard the potent soundtrack or experienced the trip’s stunning finish, you need to catch up. The Ken is at 4061 Adams Ave. in Kensington.

Three slices of Mod: As accessory to the elegantly engaging “Masters of Midcentury Modernism: Evelyn and Jerome Ackerman,” the Mingei Museum is presenting three Thursday nights of entertaining movies outfitted with ’50s/’60s stylings:: “Pillow Talk’ (tonight), with Doris Day and Rock Hudson; “Our Man Flint” (July 9), starring James Coburn and cool chicks, and Peter Sellers’s amusing goof “The Party” (July 16). The film is at 7 p.m., with the exhibit and “movie-inspired cocktails” an hour earlier. Tickets are $15 ($10 for members). The Mingei faces Prado Plaza in Balboa Park, and the site to visit is www.mingei.org.

Edge option: Johan Renck’s “Downloading Nancy,” which has gotten some great reviews for Maria Bello, opens tomorrow (Friday) at the Reading Gaslamp 15 downtown. Bello plays a wife who wants out terminally, by way of a gamey Web site and the man (Jason Patric) she meets through it. The story is not for kids or fans of romance novels.

A QUOTE (not a blurb!)

“It’s real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace.”– George Hanson (Jack Nicholson) telling it true in “Easy Rider.”

David Elliott is the SDNN movie critic.

Tags: Public Enemies, Johnny Depp, Public Enemies review, Michael Mann, Marion Cotillard, John Dillinger, The End of the Line, Rupert Murray, End of the Line review, The Girl from Monaco, Anne Fontaine, Fabrice Luchini, Easy Rider, Sid Ganis, Mingei Museum, Downloading Nancy, Elke Sommer

Tags: Add new tag, David Elliott, Downloading Nancy, Easy Rider, Ken Cinema, Masters of Midcentury Modernism: Evelyn and Jerome Ackerman, Mingei Museum, Public Enemies, Public Enemies review, review The End of the Line, SDNN, The End of the Line, The End of the Line review, The Girl from Monaco review

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