The general quality of production and photography is B, a kind of BONNIE AND CLYDE subproduct, but the script is arresting enough to keep you watching even though most of the characters in the film are thoroughly repellent and almost everybody knows that Dillinger was killed outside the Biograph Theater, after watching his favorite movie, MANHATTAN MELODRAMA in 1934.
Curiously, the movie is more revealing about the pursuer (and narrator), FBI's Melvin Purvis, than John Dillinger. Purvis is intent on making a name for himself by hunting down Dillinger & Co, and it is clear that he resents then FBIS head Edgar Hoover's eagerness to grab credit for the operations that he carries out.
By and large, the film tallies with historic fact, and it depicts police personnel as being on the other side of the fence, but as open to temptation and crime as Dillinger. It also has a vignette involving Purvis and a young boy who would rather be Dillinger than a G-man (government man), which is one of the film's highlights.
It opens with great stills of the Depression era, and an appropriate song of the time. It closes with footnotes disclosing that Anna Sage (played by Leachman), a Roumanian citizen who helped catch Dillinger on Purvis' promise that he would not be shot, but had to witness his execution, was deported two years later; and Purvis himself committed suicide in 1961 with the gun with which he had executed Dillinger.
Interestingly enough, Dillinger is not depicted as mindless out and out evil, as has happened in other productions.
To me, that basic historic accuracy and script quality are the film's main assets, with Director John Milius doing a competent job of reproducing the 1930s and extracting very strong performances from Johnson as Purvis, Geoffrey Lewis, Harry Dean Stanton, Michelle Phillips, Chloris Leachman, Steve Kanaly (who looks a lot like Brad Pitt) and Warren Oates, who inexplicably disappears from the film for a long time and resurfaces at the end only to be killed, which does not really enhance his performance.
Well worth watching, at least once.
Curiously, the movie is more revealing about the pursuer (and narrator), FBI's Melvin Purvis, than John Dillinger. Purvis is intent on making a name for himself by hunting down Dillinger & Co, and it is clear that he resents then FBIS head Edgar Hoover's eagerness to grab credit for the operations that he carries out.
By and large, the film tallies with historic fact, and it depicts police personnel as being on the other side of the fence, but as open to temptation and crime as Dillinger. It also has a vignette involving Purvis and a young boy who would rather be Dillinger than a G-man (government man), which is one of the film's highlights.
It opens with great stills of the Depression era, and an appropriate song of the time. It closes with footnotes disclosing that Anna Sage (played by Leachman), a Roumanian citizen who helped catch Dillinger on Purvis' promise that he would not be shot, but had to witness his execution, was deported two years later; and Purvis himself committed suicide in 1961 with the gun with which he had executed Dillinger.
Interestingly enough, Dillinger is not depicted as mindless out and out evil, as has happened in other productions.
To me, that basic historic accuracy and script quality are the film's main assets, with Director John Milius doing a competent job of reproducing the 1930s and extracting very strong performances from Johnson as Purvis, Geoffrey Lewis, Harry Dean Stanton, Michelle Phillips, Chloris Leachman, Steve Kanaly (who looks a lot like Brad Pitt) and Warren Oates, who inexplicably disappears from the film for a long time and resurfaces at the end only to be killed, which does not really enhance his performance.
Well worth watching, at least once.