“Part of the problem comes from the leads..”

A film with Johnny Depp (Pirates of the Caribbean) and Christian Bale (Batman) about the life of one of the most notorious gangsters, the creation of the FBI and several action scenes involving machine guns, meant that I walked in with high expectations. However, I felt so wronged and violated by the film for wasting two hours of my life that I called up social services for counselling. 

Part of the problem comes from the leads, neither to whom you felt any attachment and therefore you just don’t care what happens to them. It was apparent in The Terminator that Bale should have been cast as the uncharismatic, cold robot, and it is the same story here. He is supposed to be a light amongst the darkness of incompetence- and other saviour-esque similes – but his character is seriously lacking in real motivation, making him unidentifiable. You have little clue as to why he is so supposedly dedicated. Depp is very serious and somewhat smug, lacking the charm that everyone enjoyed in his other films, and making him appear almost wooden. The film also never properly explains why, despite him robbing banks and shooting people, he is met with undying love and devotion from the public. Apart from therefore contradicting the title, this fact is never exploited or explained. I guess that in the credit crunch we’re supposed to cheer anyone on who gives the finger to The Man in the banks, but Dillinger fails to understand how banks work. He refuses to take people’s cash-in-hand on principal, but at the same time would take substantially more money from the bank, and therefore people’s savings account. As Randy Marsh would say – “it’s simple economics. I don’t understand it at all”.

Though on paper it has a great plot, overall it is executed poorly 

There were definitely some cool scenes in the film, such as the jailbreak at the very start, which added good tension and should have set the tone. Unfortunately, it didn’t. The rest of the action sequences were so poorly shot it was difficult to know what was actually going on.  In between the action there featured meaningless dialogue and a love story that made little to no sense. Though on paper it has a great plot, overall it is executed poorly with haphazard scenes that don’t really link, camera work apparently done by GCSE students and culminates in a finale where an all too familiar phase is uttered: ‘is that it?’ 

If you like this, you’ll enjoy: Watching paint dry through a shaky camera.

Sam Eagers