۱۳۸۸ آذر ۲۴, سه‌شنبه

Public Enemies

Public Enemies is a 2009 American crime film co-written and directed by Michael Mann. Set during the Great Depression, it focuses on the true story of Bureau of Investigation agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale)'s attempt to stop criminals John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham), and Pretty Boy FloydChanning Tatum). The film is an adaptation of Bryan Burrough's non-fiction book Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933–34.



Plot

The film opens in 1933 as Pretty Boy Floyd is running from Melvin Purvis and eventually Purvis takes Pretty Boy Floyd down. John Dillinger is brought to the Indiana State Prison by his partner John "Red" HamiltonJason Clarke), under the disguise of a prisoner drop. Dillinger and Hamilton overpower several guards and free members of their gang including Charles Makley (Christian Stolte) and Harry Pierpont (David Wenham). The jailbreak goes off without a hitch, until gang member Ed Shouse (Michael Vieau) beats a guard to death. A shootout ensues as the gang makes its getaway. Dillinger's friend and mentor Walter Dietrich (James Russo) is killed, and a furious Dillinger kicks Shouse out of the car. The rest of the gang retreats to a farm house hideout, where crooked East Chicago, Indiana cop Martin Zarkovich (John Michael Bolger) convinces them to hide out in Chicago, where they can be sheltered by the local Mafia. (
In East Liverpool, Ohio, Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) and several other Bureau of Investigation agents and East Liverpool Cops are running down Pretty Boy Floyd. Purvis kills Floyd and is promoted by J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup), who is struggling to expand his Bureau into a national police agency, to lead the hunt for John Dillinger, declaring the first national "War on Crime."
In between a series of bank robberies, including a violent one at the First National Bank in East Chicago, Indiana, where Dillinger kills an East Chicago cop, Dillinger meets Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard) at a restaurant and proceeds to woo her by buying her a fur coat. Frechette falls for Dillinger even after he tells her who he is, and the two quickly become inseparable.
Melvin Purvis leads a failed ambush at a hotel where he believes Dillinger is staying. An agent is shot and killed by the occupant. After the man escapes, Purvis realizes the killer wasn't Dillinger but Baby Face Nelson. After this incident, Purvis requests that Hoover bring in professional lawmen who know how to catch criminals dead or alive, including Texas "cowboy" Charles Winstead (Stephen Lang).
Police finally find Dillinger and arrest him and his gang in Tucson, Arizona. Purvis arrives that evening and briefly talks with Dillinger; Dillinger tries to size Purvis up and manages to unnerve him with his talk about the agent killed by Nelson. Dillinger is extradited back to the Lake County Jail in Crown Point, Indiana, where he is locked up by Sheriff Lillian Holley (Lili Taylor) pending trial. Dillinger and a few inmates, chief among them is Herbert Youngblood (played by Michael Bentt), carve a fake wooden gun and use it to escape the jail in Sheriff Holley's Police Cruiser. Dillinger is unable to see Frechette, who is under tight surveillance. Dillinger learns that Frank Nitti's (Bill Camp) Chicago Outfit associates are now unwilling to help him; Dillinger's crimes are motivating the U.S. government to begin prosecuting interstate crime, which imperils Nitti's lucrative bookmaking racket.
Later, Dillinger meets fellow bank robber Tommy Carroll (Spencer Garrett) in a movie theater; with him is Ed Shouse, who wants to rejoin the gang. Carroll goads Dillinger into a bank robbery job in Sioux Falls, promising a huge score. Even though Baby Face Nelson is involved, whom he doesn't like, Dillinger agrees. A shootout (triggered by Nelson shooting a cop outside the bank) occurs in which Dillinger is shot in the arm, and Carroll is shot and left for dead. They retreat to Nelson's wilderness hideout in Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin, where Dillinger's wounds are treated; the gang is disappointed to find that their haul is only a fraction of what they expected. Dillinger expresses hope he can free the rest of his gang still in prison, including Pierpont and Makley, but Red convinces him this is unlikely to happen.
Purvis and his men apprehend Carroll (who is still alive) and torture him to find the rest of the gang's location. They arrive at Little Bohemia and Purvis organizes another failed ambush, in which several civilians are killed in the cross-fire. Dillinger and Hamilton escape separately from Nelson and the rest of the gang. Agents Winstead and Hurt (Don Frye) pursue Dillinger and Hamilton through the woods on foot, engaging them in a running gun battle in which Hamilton is shot and fatally wounded. Trying to escape along the road, Nelson, Shouse and Homer Van Meter (Stephen Dorff) hijack a Bureau car, killing several agents in the process, including Purvis's partner Carter Baum (Rory Cochrane). After a car chase, Purvis and his men kill Nelson and the rest of the gang. Farther down the road, Dillinger and Hamilton steal a farmer's car and make good their escape; Hamilton dies later that night and Dillinger buries his body, covering it in lye.
Dillinger manages to meet Frechette, telling her he plans to do one last job that will pay enough for them to escape together. However, when Dillinger drops her off at a hotel that he thinks is safe, he watches helplessly as she is captured by the FBI. An interrogator, the brutish Agent Harold Reinecke (Adam Mucci) viciously beats Frechette to learn Dillinger's whereabouts until she fabricates a location where Dillinger is hiding. Agent Reinecke investigates and realizes that he has been lied to. He returns and beats Frechette in order to teach her a lesson. Frechette begins sneering that they missed their chance to capture him at the hotel, and that Dillinger's anger will know no bounds when he hears about her treatment; Purvis and Winstead arrive and angrily break up the abusive interrogation. Meanwhile, Dillinger is meeting with Alvin Karpis (Giovanni Ribisi), who tries to recruit a disinterested Dillinger in a train robbery with his associates, the Barker Gang. After hearing about the massive reward, Dillinger agrees to pull the robbery and flee the country the next day. Dillinger receives a note from Billie through his lawyer, Louis Piquet (Peter Gerety), telling him not to try and break her out of jail.
Through crooked cop Zarkovich, Purvis enlists the help of a madam and Dillinger acquaintance Anna SageBranka Katic), threatening her with deportation if she does not cooperate. She agrees to set up Dillinger, who is hiding with Sage. (
That night Dillinger and Sage see a Clark Gable movie called Manhattan Melodrama at the Biograph Theater. When the movie is over, Dillinger and the women leave as Purvis moves in. Dillinger spots the police, specifically Reinecke and is shot several times before he can draw his gun against the cop who harmed Frechette. Agent Winstead, who fired the fatal shot, listens to Dillinger's last words. Purvis departs to inform Hoover that Dillinger is dead.
Later, Winstead meets Frechette in prison. He tells her that Dillinger's dying words were "Tell Billie for me, 'Bye bye Blackbird.'" The closing text reveals that Melvin Purvis quit the FBI a year later and died by his own hand in 1960, and that Billie lived out of the rest of her life in Wisconsin following her release in 1936.

[edit] Cast


 



 Pre-production


Public Enemies is based on Bryan Burrough's 2004 non-fiction book, Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933–34. Burrough had originally begun researching the subject with the aim of creating a miniseries. The idea was accepted by HBO and Burrough was made an executive producer, along with Robert De Niro's Tribeca Productions, and was asked to write the screenplay.[9] However, Burrough had no experience in screenwriting, and says his drafts were probably "very, very bad. Ishtar bad." He began simultaneously writing a non-fiction book, which he found easier, spending two years working on it while the interest in the miniseries disappeared.[9] Burrough's book was set to be published in the summer of 2004 and he asked HBO to return the movie rights. They agreed and after the book was released, the rights were re-sold to production companies representing Michael Mann and Leonardo DiCaprio, the latter of whom was interested in playing John Dillinger. Burrough met with a representative and then heard nothing for three years.[9] The actor eventually left the project to appear in Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island.[10]
In 2007, Mann renewed interest in the project with Universal Pictures backing it. He wrote the screenplay with Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman and also directed.[3] Of the screenplay, Burrough has said "it's not 100 percent historically accurate. But it's by far the closest thing to fact Hollywood has attempted, and for that I am both excited and quietly relieved."















Filming

Principal photography began in Columbus, Wisconsin on March 17, 2008[12] and continued in Chicago, Illinois; Aurora, Illinois; Joliet, Illinois; Lockport, Illinois; Oshkosh, Wisconsin; Beaver Dam, Wisconsin; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Madison, Wisconsin; and several other places in Wisconsin until the end of June 2008, including the Little Bohemia Lodge in Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin, the actual location of a 1934 gun fight between Dillinger and the FBI.[13] Some parts of the film were shot in Crown Point, Indiana, the town where Dillinger was imprisoned and subsequently escaped from jail. The actual 1932 Studebaker used by Dillinger during a robbery in Greencastle, Indiana was also used during filming in Columbus, borrowed from the nearby Historic Auto Attractions museum.[14]
The decision to shoot parts of the film in Wisconsin came about because of the number of high quality historic buildings. Mann, who had been a student at University of Wisconsin–Madison,[15] scouted locations in Baraboo and Columbus as well as looking at 1930s-era cars from collectors in the Madison area.[16] In addition, the film was shot on actual historical sites, including the Little Bohemia Lodge, and the old Lake County jail in Crown Point, Indiana, where Dillinger staged his most famous escape where legend has it he fooled jail guards with a wooden gun[17] and escaped in the sheriff's car.[11] Scenes were shot at places that he frequented in Oshkosh. The courthouse in Darlington is the location for the courthouse scenes. A bank robbery scene was shot inside the Milwaukee County Historical Society, a former bank in Milwaukee that still has much of the original period architecture.[18]
In late March 2008 portions of the film were shot at Libertyville High School. Footage includes one of the school's science labs, an office, the school's front entrance, and the locker rooms.
In April 2008 the production filmed in Oshkosh.[19] Filming occurred downtown and at Pioneer Airport, including scenes shot using a historic Ford Trimotor airliner owned by the Experimental Aircraft Association.[20] Later that month, filming started at the Little Bohemia Lodge. In April and May 2008, film crews shot on the grounds of Ishnala, a historic restaurant in the Wisconsin Dells area.
The film became a flash point in the public debate about the "film tax credits" [21] which are offered by many states. According to a study by Wisconsin's Department of Commerce, the state of Wisconsin gave NBC Universal $4.6 million in tax credits, while the film company spent just $5 million in Wisconsin during filming.
Michael Mann, the director, decided to shoot the movie in HD format instead of using the traditional 35 mm film.

Post-production

Music

Mann also brought composer Elliot Goldenthal on board to score the film; Goldenthal also scored Mann's 1995 film Heat to critical acclaim.[23] Jazz musician Diana Krall also makes a cameo appearance singing the ballad "Bye Bye Blackbird," while Dillinger and his new love interest Billie Frechette share their first dance. A duduk is also featured in the movie.

[edit] Font

Mann commissioned graphic designer Neville Brody to create a new font which would be used in the film's title sequence and associated publicity material.[24] Brody had previously worked with Mann on the titles for Heat and The Insider.[25] Brody created a font he called New Deal. His brief was to create something which evoked the Depression era the film is set in.[24] Mann initially suggested using the London Underground typeface Johnston as a reference.[25] Brody and his team took inspiration from Soviet Constructivist styles, the New Deal program and in particular the publicity material of the WPA as a basis for the font.[25] The final design was selected and refined from more than 300 options.[25] According to Brody the font is "solid, clearly masculine and immovable."[24]

Rating

In the United States Public Enemies has received an MPAA rating of R for gangster violence and some language.[26]. In the United Kingdom, the film received a 15 certificate from the BBFC with consumer advice "Contains Strong Violence."[27] In Germany, Public Enemies only received an FSK 12 rating.

Box office

The movie opened at number three behind Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs with $25,271,675. The following weekend it had a 45.5% drop to $13,794,240 for a total of $66,221,110. The next three weekends the movie would go on to have decent drops of 46% or less.[36] As of November 8, 2009 the film has a worldwide gross of $201.4 million in revenue, twice its reported production budget.











ارسال شده توسط در هیچ نظری موجود نیست:
برچسب‌ها:
اشتراک در: پست‌ها (Atom)