Jul/091
Public Enemies
Your protagonist and your antagonist should always be just as interesting. If your hero isn’t dynamic enough, often it’s because your villain is lacking charisma as well. They each need the other to push against. If the main character has no one to react to, he can feel flat. This is especially important in a movie like Public Enemies, where you’re spending equal time with both. Public Enemies is about a ruthless FBI agent, Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) tracking the gangster John Dillinger (Johnny Depp). In this story the roles are reversed. The criminal John Dillinger is actually our hero and the lawman Purvis is the bad guy. However, John Dillinger is much better developed than Purvis. Consequently, when Purvis is on screen the movie is a big snooze. Here is what we know about John Dillinger: he’s loyal, an adrenaline junky, charming, cocky, and in love with Billie. We even know how he became a gangster. A small robbery as a youth landed him ten years in jail where he met his gang and learned how to be a better criminal.
Here is what we know about Purvis: he’s an FBI agent. We see killing and torturing, but we never know how he feels about any of it. It would have been a much more gritty and compelling picture if we knew that he was haunted by his actions. If he were a man doing terrible things for what he thought were the right reasons. If he struggled with his choices. For example, when he carries Billie to the bathroom after she has been tortured, he expresses no remorse or disgust about what his underling did. He is like an automaton, which is very off putting. Purvis has the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, asking him to do corrupt things and he never blinks. What does he think of these orders? How does he feel about taking orders from a publicity hungry politician who has never arrested anybody in his life? The movie goes out of its way to tell us that Hoover isn’t qualified to be running the FBI, but we never know what Purvis thinks of him. John has Billie. Does Purvis have any sort of personal life? How does his career affect it? In the final crawl we learn that Purvis committed suicide in 1960. I guess we’re supposed to take from this that he was troubled by his actions. It would have been a stronger film if we had seen his mixed emotions or any emotions all along.