70
Metascore
35 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100EmpireEmpireIntelligent and challenging: Mann's crime epic could take two viewings to fully absorb, but it's worth every devoted minute.
- 88Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertThis is a very good film, with Depp and Bale performances of brutal clarity. I'm trying to understand why it is not quite a great film. I think it may be because it deprives me of some stubborn need for closure.
- 88Miami HeraldRene RodriguezMiami HeraldRene RodriguezMichael Mann's extraordinary Public Enemies is an unusual sort of gangster picture, a near-impressionistic recreation of the last year in the life of one of American history's most notorious bank robbers.
- 88Rolling StonePeter TraversRolling StonePeter TraversPublic Enemies comes at you like Dillinger did: all of a sudden. It's movie dynamite.
- 75Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsChicago TribuneMichael PhillipsIt's a fascinating bundle of contradictions -- authentic in a million details, deeply romanticized in others. Cool, calm and collected, this is more love story than gangster picture.
- 60The New YorkerDavid DenbyThe New YorkerDavid DenbyYet, for all its skill, Public Enemies is not quite a great movie. There’s something missing--a sense of urgency and discovery, a more complicated narrative path, a shrewder, tougher sense of who John Dillinger is.
- 50The Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttThe Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttThe film lacks the juice promised by the teaming of such extraordinary filmmakers with a cast as large as a Hooverville encampment.
- 50VarietyTodd McCarthyVarietyTodd McCarthyOddly, too, the film is somewhat shortchanged by its great star, Johnny Depp, who disappointingly has chosen to play Dillinger as self-consciously cool rather than earthy and gregarious.
- 50TimeRichard CorlissTimeRichard CorlissIt lacks overall focus, and at the end you may have a question for Michael Mann: Why'dyou bother? [July 6, 2009, p.59]
- 50New York PostLou LumenickNew York PostLou LumenickDisappointing, curiously uninvolving.