Michael Mann has a thing for experts. Starting with THIEF, he's made a career out of studying people who are stone-cold badasses when it comes to doing their job. Cops, robbers, feds, boxers, runners, trappers, professional killers, TV news producers, Nazis... his protagonists are untouchable so long as they hew to their professional ethics. It's only when they knowingly give in to a weakness (usually a woman) that their perfectly maintained world comes crashing down.
So if this just-released trailer (in Glorious Quicktime™!) for PUBLIC ENEMIES looks familiar, know that it's just a master filmmaker working another variation on a theme with which he's been obsessed for over thirty years. There are new flourishes, though: Depp's John Dillinger doesn't really qualify as a loner, he's reckless, and he doesn't live by an ocean. But the cop/criminal duality that Mann perfected with HEAT is in evidence here, with Christian Bale doing his stolid thang as G-Man Melvin Purvis. And the action looks, as always, first rate (nice to see that they're holding back on what should be the highlight of the film: the shootout at the Little Bohemia Lodge).
PUBLIC ENEMIES is due out July 1st. While you're waiting, you really should give the great MIAMI VICE another shot (stick with the theatrical cut).
