FILM REVIEW OF ''PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES" (2017)

If numbers mean anything to you, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” (*** OUT OF ****) is the fifth film in Walt Disney Studios’ 18^th century, supernatural, seafaring, fantasy franchise about swashbuckling buccaneers.  Norwegian directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg of “Bandidas” have taken the helm and recycled the best elements of the series with this boisterous as well as bizarre scavenger hunt for the fabled Trident of Poseidon. The Trident—according t0 “Tower Heist” writer Jeff Nathanson’s elaborate but rambling screenplay--will absolve any curses cast on seagoing guys.  The exhaustive Trident search amounts to a marathon enterprise in this scenic, widescreen, PG-13 rated, 129-minute epic, but everything works out in the surf.  The CGI animation of various characters and the ocean where they find the Trident is probably a milestone for the franchise.  Mind you, the “Pirates” movies have savagely maligned for their heavy reliance on special visual effects.  Given that fantasy is the keystone of the franchise, such criticism seems entirely irrelevant.  Nothing about the “Pirates” movies, aside from the exotic settings and sprawling production designs, is remotely authentic.  After several mediocre movies and enough bad press to drive a lesser mortal into exile, Johnny Depp is back doing what he does best. Captain Jack Sparrow is as rum-soaked as ever, and Depp plays him with his characteristic flair for comic theatricality. 

Directors Rønning and Sandberg have delivered not only a superior sequel but also an interesting prequel.  This time we see Jack before he acquired his signature headgear and attained the rank of captain.  Captain Jack Sparrow is still as much a hero as a buffoon.  This time out he is pitted against an utterly villainous ghost, while the pride of His Majesty’s Imperial Fleet terrorizes him.  Presumably, after the least memorable 0f sequels, i.e., “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,” producer Jerry Bruckheimer sought a return to form.  Although it lacks the inspired spontaneity of the original “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,” you couldn’t ask for more from this fourth sequel.  Forty minutes shorter than the second, overindulgent sequel “Dead Man’s Chest,” “Dead Men Tell No Tales” ties up many loose narrative threads as well as charts a possible future for the franchise. 

“Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” opens with an attention-grabbing scene.  Twelve-year old Henry Turner (newcomer Lewis McGowan) rows out by himself into the ocean at night. Knotting a rope to his ankle, which in turn is attached to an anchor, he steps from the boat into the briny deep, and the anchor plunges him down to the ocean floor.  Holding his breath all the way down, Henry lands on the deck of the sunken pirate ship The Flying Dutchman.  Henry meets the ghostly apparition of his father, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom of “Ned Kelly”), and assures him that he hasn’t given up on his lifting the curse on his dad.  Henry tells him about the Trident of Poseidon and assures his father that he can live on land again as soon as Henry acquires the trident.  The Flying Dutchman surfaces from the deep, and Will reminds Henry that the trident is largely a legend.  Nevertheless, Henry vows to find it. Nine years elapse, and Henry (Brenton Thwaites of “Maleficent”) is aboard a British sailing ship in pursuit of a pirate ship.  Henry warns the captain in vain that he is pursuing a treacherous course into the Devil’s Triangle as the ship approaches a tunnel in a mountain surrounded by a reef.  The captain charges Henry with treason and has the youth clapped in irons.  Not long afterward, the dreaded Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem of “Skyfall”) attacks his ship.  They kill everybody aboard except Henry because they find Jack Sparrow wanted posters in his possession.  Salazar allows Henry to live on the condition that he tell Jack Sparrow that he wants him.  Furthermore, Salazar lets Henry live because he always sends one lone survivor back to tell the tale.

Meantime, Sparrow and his pirate crew have sneaked into the township of St. Martin.  They have come to rob the bank.  The bank directors are celebrating the addition of new, impregnable vault that nobody can rob.  When they open the formidable vault, the commotion awakens a sozzled Jack Sparrow who is inside it.  The British fire a volley about the same time that Jack’s crew has lashing the vault to a team of powerful horses.  Whipping the steeds into action, they wind up hauling the whole bank along with the vault behind them!  Jack Sparrow entangles his foot in one of the ropes, and he is dragged along behind it, blissfully guzzling rum from a bottle.  Predictably, the British follow with muskets blazing.  The trouble is the door to the vault doesn’t shut and all the wealth in the vault spills out in a trail of golden bread crumbs that citizens scoop up.  This qualifies as one of the best gags in this sprawling spectacle.  Indeed, it recalls a similar robbery in “Fast Five.”  Later, after the British Navy recaptures Jack, they set out to decapitate him with a French guillotine.  At the same time, the British are poised to hang an alleged witch, Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario of “The Maze Runner”), because she claims to know how to read the stars as if they were a map.  Not only does Henry believe she can lead him to the Trident, but also that Jack Sparrow has a compass that can aid them on the quest.  Henry enlists the help of Sparrow’s crew, and this escape sequence is both hilarious and exciting.

The characters in “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” run the gamut of larger-than-life as well as larger-than-death.  Salazar’s zombie pirate crew are a CGI miracle.  Most of his crew are missing fragments of their anatomy, some even their heads.  The fifth installment in the “Pirates” franchise will keep you shivering and snickering.

FILM REVIEW OF ''POINT BREAK" (2015)

Sometimes, the best thing a remake can do is remind you how inspired the original was.  Kathryn Bigelow’s rambunctious FBI procedural crime thriller “Point Break” (1991) followed a rookie G-man as he investigated a dauntless quartet of bank robbers on a crime spree that sported latex masks of past presidents.  Zesty dialogue, dynamic performances, striking surfing footage, and slam-bang shoot-outs propelled this invigorating film through its formula.  “Invincible” director Ericson Core, who started out as a cinematographer on actioneers like “The Fast and the Furious,” “Daredevil,” and “Payback,” has helmed a remake every bit as adrenaline-laced as Bigelow’s vintage venture.  Indeed, Core and veteran second unit director Mic Rodgers have staged stupendous stunts galore that are ten-times more electrifying than those Bigelow came up for in her tense Los Angeles based beach saga.  Comparatively, Core and “Law Abiding Citizen” scenarist Kurt Wimmer have shown the good sense to expand their remake beyond the confines of Los Angeles and set it in a larger-than-life, international arena.  Furthermore, the feisty villains in the remake hail from different countries just as their audacious felonies occur in picturesque parts of Italy, Germany, Hawaii, Switzerland, Venezuela, and French Polynesia.  If you cannot getaway to these exotic locales, “Point Break” (**1/2 OUT OF ****) is the closest thing you’ll get beyond an atmospheric National Geographic documentary.  The second best thing that this remake does is deliver realistic, death-defying, style stunts that will have you cringing in fear or clutching the armrests of your seat with white-knuckled fists.  

Extreme sports junkie Johnny Utah (Luke Bracey of “The November Man”) and his best friend, Jeff (Max Thieriot of “Jumper”), have embarked on a freestyle motocross in the rugged Arizona desert.  They straddle their dirt bikes with reckless but nimble abandon along the spine of a treacherous mosaic of knolls while a helicopter shoots video of their suicidal shenanigans.  The montage of these daredevils careening toward the end of the spine and then leaping their bikes like Evel Knievel across a gap to skid to a stop atop a towering monolith of rock the size of a small helipad is harrowing.  Unfortunately, Jeff skids too far, cannot recover, and plunges to his death from the mountain-top.  Jeff’s demise thoroughly devastates Johnny.  Johnny quits, goes back to school, and then graduates from law school.  Seven years later, our hero enters the FBI and finishes the obstacle course at Quantico as if it were a picnic.  Nevertheless, Johnny’s boss, Instructor Hall (Delroy Lindo of “Malcolm X”), isn’t sure Utah will fit in as an FBI agent after he completes probationary period. 

Meanwhile, an eccentric gang of thieves that has been ripping off millions from companies around the globe with ties to American conglomerates has the Bureau stymied.  This intrepid quartet storms the tenth floor of an African diamond company with their bikes and clean sweeps a fortune in jewels.  Afterward, they launch their bikes from the tenth floor and deploy parachutes as they descend.  These fearless Robin Hood robbers surprise the unsuspecting poverty-stricken natives of Mumbai and shower them with a million dollars worth of diamonds.  Later, these thieves raid a cargo plane in flight and release two giant pallets of paper currency in the skies above Mexico.  A blizzard of paper descends onto more unsuspecting but ecstatic natives.  The FBI is hopelessly baffled by both robberies.  Johnny Utah barges into Hall’s office and argues that the felons are extreme athletes.  According to our hero, these criminals are trying to complete a gauntlet of ‘Ordeals’ set up by an environmentalist-guru, Ozaki Ono, who died before he could finish them himself.  As it turns out, the ring leader of the gang, Bodhi (Édgar Ramírez of “The Bourne Ultimatum”), was the man who was with Ono when Ono died.  Roach (Clemens Schick of “Casino Royale”), Chowder (Tobias Santelmann of “Hercules”), and Grommet (Matias Varela of “Easy Money”) are in cahoots with Bodhi.  Hall sends Utah to scrutinize these guys with veteran FBI agent Pappas (Ray Winstone of “The Gunman”) supervising him.  

Johnny manages to infiltrate the gang after he nearly drowns during a surfing accident.  The same thing happened to the Keanu Reeves character in the original.  Instead of the gang’s moll saving his life, Bodhi rescues him.  Our rookie FBI agent is clearly impressed by Bodhi and classifies him as a Zen warrior in search of Nirvana.  Predictably, Utah’s sympathetic attitude puts him at odds with his cynical superiors.  Our protagonist accompanies Bodhi’ bunch on an ‘Ordeal’ where they don flying suits and glide through a craggy mountain pass as if they were acrobatic squirrels on aerial maneuvers.  The camaraderie between heroic Luke Bracey and villainous Édgar Ramírez isn’t as compelling as it was between Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze in Bigelow’s earlier film.  Bodhi surprises Utah because he isn’t interested in keeping the loot as much as giving it to the less fortunate.  Utah struggles to convince the Bureau that Bodhi and his cronies consider themselves crusaders rather than criminals.  Furthermore, they indulge in their insane antics to see when they will reach ‘point break’ where their fear will make them cowards.

Altogether, the new “Point Break” is only half as good as its superior predecessor.  The chief problem is that Core bogs the story down in the eight ‘Ordeals’ that Bodhi and his crew must perform.  Literally, the stunts overshadow the story!  Unfortunately, the movie degenerates into a surfeit of sensational looking Guinness Book of World Records stunts.  Core sacrifices any sense of narrative cohesion because he repeatedly puts the plot on pause to indulge in the aerobatics.  Eventually, the new “Point Break” reaches its own point break, and you find yourself wishing that the filmmakers would stop delaying the inevitable finale.  The last bank heist delivers a genuine surprise as our hero imperils himself to capture the villain, but by then “Point Break” has worn out its welcome.  Although it doesn’t surpass the original “Point Break,” this energetic remake will keep you poised on the edge of your seat.

FILM REVIEW OF "THE BIG STEAL" (1949)

"Out of the Past" leads Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer team up again in director Don Siegel's fast-paced, lightweight, romantic crime thriller "The Big Steal." Although "Crime by Night" scribe Daniel Mainwaring and "Dead Reckoning" writer Gerald Drayson Adams have penned a fairly conventional actioneer, the narrative exposes one vast difference between Americans and Mexicans. Americans work up a lather getting to where they are going, while the Hispanic populace takes it easy. Several times our fast and furious American protagonists find themselves being slowed down by the Hispanics who appear in no particular hurry to get things done. Not only does Siegel snap up the suspense, but he also turns this frenzied chase into a scenic travelogue.

The hero and heroine rampage from the port of Vera Cruz through sun-drenched Mexico after an elusive as well as larcenous criminal. Jim Fiske (Patric Knowles of "Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman") owes Joan Graham (Greer) the sum of $2-thousand that she loaned to him. She has followed him below the border to retrieve her money. They were apparently going to get married. Meanwhile, it seems that Fiske has waylaid an Army Lieutenant, Duke Halliday (Robert Mitchum) who was picking up a $300-thousand Army payroll to take back to the base. As the finance officer, Halliday was responsible for the loot. When he explains that Fiske robbed him, Captain Blake suspects Halliday put Fiske up to the robbery. Halliday goes AWOL to recover the loot and finds Captain Vincent Blake (tough guy William Bendix of "Guadalcanal Diary") in hot pursuit, too. The fight that Blake and Halliday get into at the outset of the action is pretty rough. Siegel appears to have accelerated the film so that Halliday's elbow blow against the unsuspecting Blake stuns the captain.

This nifty but notorious little B-picture went into production about the same time that Robert Mitchum was arrested for smoking marihuana. A large amount of action occurs on the roads as the characters careen through towns. Eventually, a sly Mexican police officer, Inspector General Ortega (Ramon Novarro of "Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ"), who is brushing up on his English, takes an interest in the activities of these Americans and has them shadowed. He intervenes at one point and everybody lingers at a hotel. Basically, "The Big Steal" (*** out of ****) unfolds like a game of cat and mouse. Fiske cleverly eludes Halliday and Graham while they elude a determined Blake. Blake goes to Inspector General Ortega and tells him that he has lost his credentials; specifically extradition papers to take Halliday back into custody and return him to America. Fiske literally erects roadblocks for our hero and heroine and they do likewise to Blake. At one point, Halliday loosens a flock of goats to block the road. A rather lengthy scene finds Halliday and Joan stalled on a remote road where a bridge is being torn up. The Mexican official is initially reluctant to help them. Furthermore, they cannot turn around and retrace their path because Blake breathing down their collective necks. Joan explains to the road superintendent that they are eloping, and her father doesn't like Halliday. She explains that her father wants her to marry "a short ugly man" and she prefers "a big pretty" man. Joan's lie prompts the road superintendent to create a momentary way through the construction so they can continue onto the highway.

The action concludes with a wilderness shoot-out. A guy named Cole armed with a revolver and a rifleman named Jose ambush Duke and Joan as they approach Seton hacienda. This Seton is the same Julius Seton that Joan encountered earlier in the plot. She almost destroyed a priceless artifact by distracting Seton's assistant. Now, in the fourth quarter, Seton reappears. We learn that he is a fence as well as a collector of priceless artifacts. Seton is paying Fiske $150-thousand for the hot $300-thousand. Duke kills Jose, but Cole gets the drop on both Duke and Joan. Cole brings Duke and Joan to Seton. Moments later Blake bursts in with his gun drawn. Fiske explains the deal about the $150-thousand and Blake agrees to split it with Fiske. As Fiske is leaving, Blake guns him down. Afterward, Blake assures Joan, "You can't trust a guy like that." Blake phones Inspector General Ortega that he was bringing Duke in for Ortega to arrest. Unfortunately, he adds, Duke tried to escape and he had to kill him. A fight erupts with Duke and Blake tangling again while Joan scuffles with Seton over a priceless artifact. Interestingly, their first encounter led to his assistant nearly dropping a priceless artifact. Seton doesn't fare so well in the second encounter that begins with Joan smashing a priceless artifact. Joan wounds Seton and Duke triumphs over Blake. The big revelation is that Blake and Fiske were accomplices. The picture wraps up with the leads observing mating ceremonies and then children parade pass them as if to suggest that procreation after marriage is the suitable thing to do.

Siegel does a nice job of helming this mayhem. The pace rarely slackens and the characters convey exposition about their predicaments without slowing down the action. Interesting enough, Siegel likes to show the shadow of some characters on the wall before he reveals who they are. When Blake approaches Halliday's state room aboard the ship, we see his shadow on the wall before we see him. Later, after Fiske leaves his hotel room with Joan in the shower, he heads down on hall while we see the shadow of Halliday approaching Fiske's door.

FILM REVIEW OF "FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE" (ITALIAN-1965)

Sergio Leone's superlative "For a Few Dollars More" with Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef ranks in the top five of all Spaghetti westerns. This exciting bounty hunter shoot'em up has Monco (Clint Eastwood) forming an uneasy alliance with Colonel Douglas Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef) to wipe out a ruthless gang of murderous desperadoes. Monco wants the bounty on El Indio (Gian Maria Volonte of "A Bullet for the General") and his gang, while Colonel Mortimer vows to kill Indio strictly out of revenge because the dastard raped his sister and she committed suicide. A multitude of distinctive Leone touches appear in this fabulous frontier saga; this represents the first time that Leone would stage a gunfight in the round. Meanwhile, Ennio Morricone's theme music is classic with its chiming bells, piercing whistles, and crisp whip cracks, but it is the tender and moving watch-piece theme that is really memorable here. Leone and cinematographer Massimo Dallamano lensed this 132 minute oater in the craggy mountainous regions of southern Spain that substitute marvelously for the American southwest. Every time that a six-gun toting character tramps the gritty earth with his jingling, spur-clad boots, you can hear the scratchy sound of dirt being displaced. The sets seem so much more authentic the way that they have been grafted to the spartan scenery.

The opening words on screen establish "For A Few Dollars More" as a bounty hunting western: "Where life has no value, death sometimes has its price. This is why the bounty hunters appeared." Clint Eastwood returns as the monosyllabic gunman dressed in a serape, with wrist-bands, and a Colt's .45 revolver with a coiled snake on the plow handle grip. He is referred to throughout "For A Few Dollars More" as Manco. More than Eastwood's stoic performance, it is Lee Van Cleef's formidable presence as a natty stranger clad in black who carries an arsenal of weapons on his horse that makes this western stand out. Originally, Leone had sought the services of Lee Marvin. Marvin would have been exemplary, but veteran western heavy Lee Van Cleef made the role of Colonel Mortimer into one of his most memorable roles. Later, Van Cleef would take the Colonel character a bit farther in Gianfranco Parolini's exciting saga "Sabata." As the pot-smoking villain, Gian Maria Volonte challenges both men at every turn of the plot. Volonte looks like the equivalent of a wolf with his lupine features and grizzled hair. There is a psychotic glint in his eyes that make you believe that he prefers to shoot first and ask questions later. "For A Few Dollars More" represents the first western in over 40 years where a character actually smokes a marihuana cigarette. Everybody here looks like a mutant, especially Klaus Kinski cast as a killer named 'Wild' with a hunchback. Leone characterizes each character with an Ennio Morricone musical motif.

"For A Few Dollars More" begins with Colonel Mortimer killing a repulsively ugly outlaw named Guy Calloway (José Terrón of ""God Forgives... I Don't!") after he tries to flee from the Colonel. Initially, Colonel Mortimer is riding on a train reading the Bible. He pulls the emergency cord to get off the train at Tucumcari. The railroad officials aren't very happy about this sudden stopover. Mortimer enters a saloon and shows the bartender a wanted poster of Guy Calloway. He wants to know where Calloway is and gets tough with the bartender. The bartender says nothing about Calloway's whereabouts, but he rolls his eyes to the ceiling in a glance the indicates that Calloway is upstairs. Mortimer slides the wanted poster under the door of Calloway's room and steps to the side as bullets splinter the door. When Mortimer enters the hotel room, he finds a lady soaking nude in a bath tub. He pokes his head out the window and spot Calloway heading for his horse. Mortimer wields a rifle, kills Guy's horse and then kills Guy with a bullet in the forehead as the villain shoots at him. Mortimer collects a thousand dollars for Calloway, and the scene shifts to White Rocks where Monco (Clint Eastwood)enters a saloon and runs into the sheriff. He asks the sheriff three questions and spots Red. He steps up to Red's table and intervenes in a card game so that he can play one himself with Red. 'Baby' Red Cavanaugh (José Marco of "Man of the Cursed Valley") plays the hand with Manco and gets a 3 Kings of Heart, a 10 of spades, and queen of hearts. Manco beats him with a queen of spades, a jack of diamonds, and three aces, one of spades, one of hearts, and one of diamonds. Manco winds up not only killing him but three of Red's gunslinging partners. When Manco collects the $2-thousand in bounty money, the sheriff tells him that it would take him three years to earn that much money.

Now that Leone has set up his two heroes, he shifts the scene again to introduce the villain as a band of killers break El Indio out of prison. Coincidentally, Indio shares his cell with a carpenter (Dante Maggio of "The Fighting Fists of Shangai Joe") who knows a thing or two about the safe at the Bank of El Paso. El Indio and his trigger-happy gunslingers kill all the uniformed prison guards and Indio shoots the warden in the face and blasts four more bullets into him. Indio allows one sentry to survive so that he can tell the story. Later, Indio tracks down the man who turned him into the authorities and used the bounty money to start a family. They bring the traitor, his wife and infant son to a run-down mission. Groggy (Luigi Pistilli of "Death Rides A Horse") shows up and shoots another gunman's spur rowel so that it starts spinning and then he shoots it to make it stop spinning. Indio's men murder the man's wife and 18 month old son and then Indio prods the man into a duel with the watch-piece used as a timer. Not surprisingly, Indio draws first and guns the man down. Thereafter, Nino gives Indio a marihuana joint to smoke.

Meanwhile, Mortimer searches for a bank that only a maniac would try to rob and learns that the Bank of El Paso is just such a bank. Indeed, Indio plans to rob a bank, but he has planned a very unconventional hold-up. Monco and Colonel Mortimer arrive in town at the same time. They agree to work together but neither truly trusts the other. Earlier, they spent an evening shooting at each other's hats that ended into a stand-off. Monco shot at Mortimer's hat and the hat skidded past Mortimer. Comparatively, Mortimer blows Monco's hat off his head and continues to shoot at it in the air. Afterward, they devise a plan that calls on Monco infiltrating the gang. Monco uses dynamite to blow a hole in the cell occupied by El Indio's right-hand man Sancho Perez (Panos Papadopoulos of "The Indian Tomb") who is serving time in prison. When Indio asked him why he wants to join his gang, Monco says that he wants to kill them all for the bounty on their heads. Indio appreciates Monco's audacity and admits him to his gang.

The bank hold-up itself differs from most westerns of the day. After they blast a hole in the rear of the bank, the bandits take the entire safe, something that would be imitated in "Sabata," and haul it off in a wagon. Mortimer worms his way into the gang because he claims that he can open it with nitro after the villains cannot blast it open without destroying the bank notes. Each shoot out is terrifically staged and the gunshots themselves are nothing like the American equivalent. The final shoot-out in the round with the chimes on the watch serving as the timing device is imaginative. "For a Few Dollars More" is better than both "A Fistful of Dollars" and "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." British spaghetti western expert Christopher Frayling has written an excellent book about this movie and its shattering impact on American westerns as well as Italian westerns.

FILM REVIEW OF ''PUBLIC ENEMIES'' (2009)

“Miami Vice” creator Michael Mann recreates the Golden Age of Bank Robbery during the Great Depression in 1933 with his latest thriller “Public Enemies” (**** out of ****) and gangsters riddle the screen with gunfire galore. This depiction of the rise to prominence of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the demise of John Dillinger is based on bestseller author Bryan Burrough’s non-fiction book. “Pirates of the Caribbean” superstar Johnny Depp is cast against type as Dillinger, the sympathetic Robin Hood style desperado who acquired notoriety as ‘Public Enemy Number One.’ “Batman Begins” sensation Christian Bale impersonates the soft-spoken FBI Special Agent Melvin Purvis who brought Dillinger down. Although they drive vintage automobiles, blast away with vintage Thompson .45 caliber submachine guns, and wear vintage apparel, the characters in “Public Enemies” prove to be just as enthralling as any of Mann’s characters in his contemporary movies. Unfortunately, Mann doesn't always hit the bullseye for historical accuracy. Many of the events are reversed. For example, Pretty Boy Floyd died after John Dillinger and Melvin Purvis did not shoot him with a high-powered rifle. Similarly, Baby Face Nelson did not died before John Dillinger, but he perished long afterward. Moviegoers will cherish historical accuracy are in for several more surprises, but then "Public Enemie" is just a movie. Suffice to say, anybody who has read anything about Dillinger will not be surprised at anything that happens in this biographical epic.

“Public Enemies” opens with an interesting shoot-out at the Indiana State Penitentiary with a manacled John Dillinger getting escorted into the grim looking prison. This is the first of several surprises that occur for people who don’t know much about ‘Johnny’ Dillinger. Afterward, Dillinger and his gang arrive in East Chicago where they have bribed the local constabulary to ignore them. They also receive some favors from the local bookmakers that operate a coast-to-coast wire service link-up that relates to gambling on horse races. Mann shows Dillinger robbing banks and playing ‘spin the dial’ with bank presidents. Dillinger has men stationed out in front of the banks as inconspicuous sentinels with weapons concealed under their coats. Dillinger’s closest associate Red (Jason Clarke of “Death Race”) keeps the stopwatch running and knows when to wheel up to the front of the bank. Dillinger doesn’t take money from any of the common folk in the bank. He steals only from the banks and then he takes hostages for a ride with him to ensure that the local authorities don’t open fire on him when his gang cruises out of town.

All of this publicity aggravates FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (Bill Crudup of “Watchmen” in an awesome look-alike performance) and he assigns Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale of “Terminator: Salvation”) to manage the Chicago Office with orders to capture Dillinger. Purvis’ shooting of legendary bank robber Charles ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd (Channing Tatum of “Step Up”) in an orchard is what brought him to J. Edgar’s attention. Purvis doesn’t take long to realize that Hoover’s smart young men aren’t adequate for the task, and he requests help from the Dallas FBI Office. Several tough-looking, no-nonsense customers show up in Chicago who look like they were born with badges. Charles Winstead (Stephen Lang of “Tombstone”) and his cohorts stand out from the young, buttoned down types that surround Purvis. The FBI relies on telephone wiretaps and scientific analysis to monitor the Dillinger gang. When they cannot catch the gangsters squawking on the phone, they resort to more brutal methods, such as delaying medical treatment to a wounded bank robber to learn the whereabouts of the gangsters.

Dillinger picks up coat check girl Evelyn ‘Billie’ Frechette (Oscar winning Parisian actress Marion Cotillard of "La Vie en Rose") and cannot get her out of his system even when she walks off and leaves him after their initial encounter. Dillinger pledges himself to her, but she warns him that she doesn’t want to watch him die. Things take a turn for the couple when Dillinger is captured in Tucson, Arizona, as Frechette and he are about to take a bath together and the authorities fly him back to Indiana. Dillinger’s escape from Indiana is a part of criminal history. He wielded a fake wooden gun and bluffed his way out of jail. Later, he hooks up with Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham of “Gangs of New York”) to knock over a ripe bank in Sioux Falls with $800-thousand in its vault. Everything backfires on Dillinger and Nelson. They lug off barely $30-grand and then Purvis and his men surround the inn where the gang has taken refuge and a major firefight erupts with several gangsters dying in a blaze of gunfire.

Johnny Depp bears a closer resemblance to John Dillinger than Christian Bale does to Melvin Purvis. Bale is actually taller than Purvis. Dillinger was idolized by many during the Depression and he strove to stay in the limelight so that the common people would harbor him when he was on the lam. According to Mann’s version of history, Dillinger fell not only because of the persistence of Melvin Purvis and the FBI, but also because Dillinger brought too much heat onto his fellow criminals in the coast-to-coast racing rackets after Congress passed legislation against interstate crime. The cast is first-rate throughout “Public Enemies.” Mind you, “Public Enemies” doesn’t lionize Dillinger to the degree that director Arthur Penn did for Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker in “Bonnie & Clyde,” but we get glimpses of Dillinger’s celebrity status when the Feds fly him back to Indiana.

“Public Enemies” ranks as the best gangster picture since Brian de Palma’s “The Untouchables.” The real curiosity is the R-rating that “Public Enemies” drew when it doesn’t contain half as much violence and gore as the most recent “Punisher” actioneer. The shoot-outs are noisy but relatively bloodless, though there is an interrogation scene where a detective roughs up a woman. Incidentally, many of the scenes were lensed on the actual locations where this story transpired.

FILM REVIEW OF ''JCVD'' (2008-French)

Martial arts action sensation Jean-Claude Van Damme acts more often than he kick-boxes in French-Algerian writer & director Mabrouk El Mechri's "JCVD," (*** out of ****) an unusual hybrid film with autobiographical, post-modernist, satiric elements entwined with a tense hostage-robbery saga that resembles nothing the 'Muscles from Brussels' has ever done. Indeed, Jean-Claude breaks the fourth wall about two-thirds of the way into this change-of-pace thriller and delivers a soulful six-minute soliloquy about his tortured life as a celebrity that qualifies as the most mind-blowing scene in his entire career. Van Damme recounts the peaks and valleys of his twenty-year career, his bouts with narcotics, and his bouts with his wives. For example, in 1992, Van Damme divorced his third wife, Gladys, had a son with his fourth wife, broke up with her, and then went back to Gladys in 1999. Of course, Van Damme improvised most of this scene in a single take, but he appears startlingly candid.

El Mechri doesn't always succeed with this off-beat effort. This surreal "Rashomon" meets Sidney Lumet's "Dog Day Afternoon" by way of "Being John Malkovich" is an artsy-fartsy exercise in filming. Nevertheless, you've got to give the guy credit for creating one of Jean Claude's more ironic movies. Long-time, dyed-in-the-wool Van Damme fans will no doubt disdain "JCVD" as a puzzling potboiler with a weird twist of an ending. Non-Van Damme audiences, however, will herald it as a revelation. Since it is so unlike anything that the Belgiam leading man has ever done, the question is what was he thinking when he decided to veer off course with this unconventional entry? If Van Damme returns to his usual rigorous action fodder—some of which is incredibly good—"Double Team," "Hard Target," and "Sudden Death," "JCVD" will be the exception to his oeuvre. Some moments are simply staggering in their depth, while other moments misfire.

Initially, "JCVD" sounds like a vanity project. Nevertheless, Jean Claude not only pokes fun at himself, but he also diverges from the predictable antics of his typical actioneers. "JCVD" bristles with surprises and doesn't even look like his usual stuff. The widescreen cinematography has been muted and bleached so that it looks like a bleached black and white television program which enhances the film's
surrealistic quality. The Belgium kick boxer plays himself, and in real life his actual name is Jean-Claude Camille Francois Van Varenberg. There is nothing vain about the Jean Claude Van Damme that shows up in this 103-minute, R-rated saga. Recovering from an ugly custody battle with his wife over his daughter (newcomer Saskia Flanders), Jean-Claude returns to Belgium, filled with melancholy, jet-lagged out by a long flight, and broke to boot! His credit cards don't work and he isn't
looking forward to his next movie. In fact, he learns that Steve Seagal—in one of "JCVD"'s running jokes—has taken the role away from him because he has agreed to cut off his ponytail. The cabbie that drives him from the airport is a big fan, but she gets to see the wrong side of Jean-Claude and waxes critical about his arrogance.

Jean-Claude gets her to pull up across the street from a post office where he hopes
to obtain money from a wire transfer. Before he has gotten ten steps from the cab, two fans summon him and snap digital photos of him. A cop arrives and tells the cabbie that she cannot park there and the two video store geeks who have taken pictures with the kick-boxing star show them off to the cop. Meanwhile, our brawny hero stumbles into a robbery that turns into a hostage crisis. A local cop tries to thwart this crime and spots Jean-Claude inside the post office bank. He leaps to the wrong conclusion. He assumes Jean-Claude is holding up the post office. A major weakness here is that the bank robbers don't make much of an impression. They're tough and they are armed, but none of them is psychotic enough to make the hackles rise on your back. In other words, they pose a threat, but they aren't evil incarnate. Eventually, the authorities swarm to the scene and erect barriers.

Meanwhile, inside the post office/bank, three desperate gunmen rant and rave about the sudden turn of events. No, Jean-Claude doesn't pull any of his traditional stunts. He worries about dying. The robbers use him as an intermediary to talk with the police. The outcome to this suspenseful story clashes with the traditional Van Damme blockbuster. In fact, the filmmakers furnish two endings and go with the most downbeat of the two. Again, if you're a hardcore Van Damme aficionado, prepare for the worst. The ending is something that you will never suspect. The single-take opening sequence where our hero performs his standard stunts as he battles his way through an army of assailants starts out looking straightforward enough but things subtly change along the way. Later, during the custody case, the attorney for his wife riddles Van Damme's career by skewering the violent movies that he makes. This scene is absolutely hilarious and the self-deprecating Van Damme shows a different facet to his personality. "JCVD" casts Jean-Claude Van Damme as he has never been cast before--warts and all.