Johnny Depp, tinsel town’s favorite big tipper, is set to own the weekend box office with his new film Public Enemies. The Michael Mann-directed biopic centers on famed bank robber John Dillinger in the actor’s first film in years that tackles a historic character.
In recent years, Hollywood’s coolest thespian focused on fantasy-based characters like Jack Sparrow, Willy Wonka, Sweeney Todd and forthcoming roles like the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland and the ever-changing Tony (also portrayed by the late Heath Ledger) in Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Depp’s last real-life characters were Earl of Rochester John Wilmot in 2005′s The Libertine and Peter Pan author Sir James Matthew Barrie in 2004′s Finding Neverland. In the ’90s, of course, he tackled several real-life characters including Jack Kerouac, Donnie Brasco and Hunter S. Thompson.
(This also marks a return to reality-based storylines for Mann, whose primary biopics were The Insider and Ali in 1999 and 2001, respectively.)
The film itself is based on Bryan Burrough’s Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933–34, which documents the efforts of FBI agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) to nab Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd (Channing Tatum), Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham) and other famous robbers of the time. These colorful characters, along with Ma Barker, Al Capone, and Bonnie and Clyde, dominated the press headlines in what became known as the “Public Enemy Era.”
Interestingly, Burrough originally wrote the book as the basis for a proposed HBO mini-series under Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Productions. By the time the book was published, interest waned at HBO with the rights shifting to Mann and Leonardo DiCaprio — with the Titanic actor intending to play Dillinger. When DiCaprio signed up for Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island (October), Depp stepped into the role.
Similar to the reality TV rage of recent years, newspapers sold like gangbusters in the ’30s by covering the real-life exploits of Depression-era criminals. Backed by the elite talents of Mann and Depp, Public Enemies stands out as the top film about the era since Brian De Palma’s 1987 Al Capone classic The Untouchables.