EW’s Summer preview has unveiled two more photos from Michael Mann’s 1930s gangster picture “Public Enemies” (one is online and one in the mag only).
One shows Christian Bale as FBI agent/ J. Edgar Hoover’s goldenboy Melvin Purvis blasting a tommy gun in the dark. “He was known as the Clark Gable of the bureau,” Bale told EW, explaining the particulars of his character. “Although he was on the other side of the law from John Dillinger, they were similar in some ways. Purvis had the finest car at the time, a Pierce Arrow, and he was driven to work each day by a chauffeur. To this day, he’s responsible for taking down more public enemies than any other agent in history.”
The second photo is of a forlorn-looking Johnny Depp as the villain of the film (or is it the hero?) John Dillinger, a character he once again calls a “modern-day Robin Hood.”
Though the film is already being touted as a possible Oscar contender, Christian Bale warns that, just like Michael Mann’s “Heat” (which featured heavyweight thespians Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino in just one scene together), he and Depp have a similarly small screen time in which to create sparks.
“We had very few scenes together,” he said. “In fact, it was one. Otherwise, Johnny was just a silhouette I was shooting at,” Apparently Depp did a lot of shooting too. (“I fired so many bullets I was literally tasting metal for a week afterwards”)
Having read the screenplay (which is pretty excellent), we’ve already hinted (as above) that Dillinger is actually the hero of the film and Bale states this in unequivocal terms. “Don’t misunderstand,” he says of the film and their scene together. “This [movie] is about Dillinger. I’m the supporting role. So it’s not the kind of moment [like ‘Heat’] that you’re [thinking] about.”
For his part, Michael Mann says he wrote a similar version of the script in the 1970s. “Nothing ever happened with it. But I guess you can say it’s been in the back of my brain all these years.”
“Public Enemies” has an all-star cast, also featuring appearances by Billy Crudup, Marion Cotillard, Leelee Sobieski, Giovanni Ribisi, Channing Tatum, David Wenham, Stephen Dorff, Lili Taylor, Carey Mulligan, Rory Cochrane, and many others. The film is due in theaters July 1.
Here’s the latest trailer which we like monumentally better than the original which seemed aimed at American teen audiences and was way too to aggro-heavy for our tastes.