Public Enemies

[Tom Lowe]

I think this is my favorite picture of the year, so far...

Dillinger is a fantastic character to base a film on, and the acting here is impeccable. Mann obviously had his pick of the litter from Hollywood. Depp, Crudup, Bale.... All the supporting actors were perfect, and absolutely nailed it.

This movie has an instant-classic feel, but an unconventional, ultra-realistic, sometimes cold, stark and digital look for a gangster picture. Mann has mixed 35mm film with F950s, F23s, and even Sony EX1s and some crummy HDV cams. This mixture of formats and cameras was a failure, IMO. Almost a borderline disaster. What could have been a home-run for the DP, turned into an unsightly mess because of Mann's continued, needless insisting on all this mixing of cameras and formats. Why?

Rodrigo Prieto was able to successfully mix film and digital in State of Play, but in that movie, he specifically used film for the old-school newsroom and news reporting scenes, and the Genesis for the ultra-clean and polished world of politics in Washington. In State of Play, the difference between film and digital was subtle, almost subliminal. It served a clear purpose and worked very well.

With Public Enemies, time and time again I found myself completely distracted by glaring "video moments" and just overall bad imagery. Why on earth did Mann choose to film this way?? Many shots displayed severe purple and green banding on windows. I am at a loss to explain WTF Mann was thinking.

I understand that he wanted an un-glossy, realistic take on the gangster genre, rather than the played out overlit filmic look of the Godfather, Untouchables, etc. But he should have just chosen Genesis, or F23, or Red One -- one camera! -- and stuck with it.

This movie is a success in spite of the cameras and poor format choices. The acting, the choice of framing, etc, override the disgraceful technical choices.

The score was done by Elliot Goldenthal, but in my opinion, I heard very strong influences from Hans Zimmer. Certain parts of the score seem to be lifted almost note for note from some of Zimmer's works. The shot of Dillinger watching the Gable movie near the end had a piece of music that Zimmer should be probably getting royalties on. :sifone:

 

[Bayden Docking]

Saw the previews for this the other night. cant wait for it to come out down here. It looks like a cool character for Depp to play.

Doc.

 

[mike ogden]

Saw it yesterday. I think the cast were very good, Depp particularly so.

Unfortunately, the film looks awful. Panning artefacts, colour fringing on whiteout shots, all the usual stuff that makes HD look appalling that technicians have been complaining about for years. Why Mann chose to do this is beyond me. It ruined the movie, which is a shame as the cast are very good in the film. If I were one of them, I'd be insulted as to how this turned out.

Not a good ad for HD.

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

So what you guys are saying is its a shoe in for best cinematography at the oscars.

 

[Dan Hudgins]

Old-fashioned

Old-fashioned

There was a time when any footage with a lens flare in it would have been edited out because it would detract from the "suspension of disbelief".

Now its like you are being dared to believe anything you see is "real"...

 

[Ace]

If Oliver stone could do it with film, you should be able to do it with digital I reckon (mixing it up that is).. But I haven't seen this yet.. Should be interesting.

I went to see Manns "Collateral" projected on film back when it was out, and it looked great. The other day it was TV.. The aesthetic was completely different. I shit you not, it looked like an episode of Cheaters.

 

[Peter Lundström]

Well Mann shoots his films to look like video, dont know why though... certainly explains all the lens flares and such.

 

[Jeremy Torrie]

The review in our Globe & Mail (national newspaper up here) was far from glowing. He's actually a pretty fair guy but did not like what Mann did with this film...expectations were very high, and apparently it's overall quite mediocre.

I guess there's something to be said for complacency.

But I do agree with Tom -I cannot wait for Avatar. I have a feeling Cameron's going to blow our minds...

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I really enjoyed it. I certainly think you are far to critical of the look. There was one shot that I saw had bad CA. I didn't like the look of car headlights either but otherwise it looked ok. I didn't like the little mini snap zooms. But I really liked some of the dynamic camera moves that I assume were shot with a lightweight HDV camera.

 

[Lars Wikstrom]

Tom... I agree with you 90% I did not think it was a good film though. I went with 3 friends tonight and one of them fell asleep. I always like Depp's acting but thought there were way to many characters to the point I was getting lost.

I have to say the one thing I could not get into was the change in cameras and looks. That pulled me right out of the story and I began to look at it in a technical eye.

Films that I could not tell and was impressed to find out that were shot digitally was Benjamen Button and Jumper. I know one was Red camera and the other was Viper.

I came on to this site tonight to talk about it but I see a thread was already started!

-Lars

 

[Andrew Walker]

I think this was Mann's worst movie he has ever done. The cinematography in it gave me a neck ache from cringing so much. I can't see how anyone could be happy with the look of this movie because it looked like shit. The movie also dragged on way too long. There were just really long scenes that should have been cut down. The action scenes were extremely weak as well, which was a bit of a surprise coming from Mann. "Heat" is one of my favorite movies and I think the action is top notch. So the only reason I can think of that made Mann make so many bad choices with this film is...crack. He must be smoking huge rocks to think that this movie is cool.

 

[Jance Allen]

Just saw Public Enemies and had to come check the forum to make sure I wasn't smoking crack. I am totally baffled by how bad this movie looks. And my completely non-tech-savvy friends asked if certain parts were supposed to look like cheap news video. The harsh blown out highlights and color fringing were the worst I've seen in a big release like this, and exposure and color timing in general just looked CHEAP. I was surprised to see Stefan Sonnenfeld in the credits.

I'll leave the story, characters, acting, framing etc. alone and just say that I was so glad to hear that the Red camera was not responsible for any of the "look" of this movie. I really don't think of myself as all that picky about this stuff, but this stood out to me as an example of what all the digital cinema camera makers and filmmakers are striving to avoid.

 

[Joel J. Feigenbaum]

I'm on the same page as Andrew and Jance. I am baffled by Mann's decision to record everyone's commendable efforts in such a sub par way. I screened a digital print, projected by a Sony 4k projector (though I assume this was a 2k print) in one of AMC's state of the art digital theaters. The blacks were milk. The look was all over the place. From fair to really really poor. Especially the footage in Billie's apartment near the end of the film, just before she sneaks out dressed as a man to meet up with Dillinger.

What were the studio execs thinking after they screened the first few days dailies? I have no doubt this was the look Mann sought. But by any professional motion picture standard one cares to choose, this footage falls short. Waaaay short.

By the way, the budget for this film was $100 million. Shooting on a Panavision camera, lab costs and all post production costs would not have amounted to more than $300,000. I'll give Mann the benefit of the doubt and up the cost to $500,000. That's still only one half of one percent of the total budget. The most important half %. Mann shot himself in the foot with a Tommy gun on this one.

Go figure...

 

[M Most]

By the way, the budget for this film was $100 million. Shooting on a Panavision camera, lab costs and all post production costs would not have amounted to more than $300,000. I'll give Mann the benefit of the doubt and up the cost to $500,000. That's still only one half of one percent of the total budget.

It was not a financially motivated decision. It was a creative one, which is the right way to determine a shooting format, even if you or others here don't happen to agree with the chosen aesthetic.