In a feature career that stretches back to the early 1980s, Michael Mann's films have tended towards the visually splendid but dramatically insubstantial. Which is not to say that there haven't been some high points -- Heat and Manhunter spring readily to mind. But one always had the suspicion that he might make better pictures if he paid less attention to creating perfect, glistening, sanitised images and more to the stories he was supposed to be telling. That's certainly not what happened last time out: his 2006 attempt to transplant his hit 80s TV show Miami Vice to the big screen was an unqualified disaster. The pressure, then, was most definitely on the 66-year-old when it came to making Public Enemies. The story of prohibition-era gangster John Dillinger is one he's been toying with for at least five years. Inspired by... [read full story]
