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Crime Movie Doesn’t Pay
“Public Enemies” takes a somber look at the American gangster.
by Wayne Melton
The mythical time and figures of the public-enemies era are by now difficult to deglamorize, although Michael Mann’s film about John Dillinger tries to shear them as close as the hair on the backs of its male characters’ tightly cropped necks.
Though filled with jailbreaks and bank robberies — Dillinger wasn’t known for his needlework — only a few images qualify as memorable: Johnny Depp as the infamous stick-up man leaps a bank-teller desk with his Thompson submachine gun; “Baby Face” Nelson (Stephen Graham), crazed with the thrill of crime, stands on top of one; Nelson, again, blasts at FBI agents closing in, and later gets blasted, puffs of vermillion wafting where he once stood.
Interestingly, it’s Dillinger at the movies, which he reputedly loved, that has the most lasting impact, when we see him revel in Clark Gable’s image on the screen and cringe at his own. Read the rest of this entry »
T-Whatever
“Terminator Salvation” feels dangerously close to the assembly line.
by Wayne Melton
The new “Terminator” movie doesn’t lack for the evil robots that bear the franchise name. There are T-600s, predecessor to the first terminator (in the series). There are flying terminators, motorcycling terminators, swimming terminators and tall-as-a-small-skyscraper terminators. Members of the entire terminator army and their brothers play death match with the humans in “Terminator Salvation,” yet this large-scale fourth installment doesn’t come close to recreating the suspense of the Arnold Schwarzenegger original. Read the rest of this entry »
