0:00

Welcome

0:06

back to Manhunting,

0:09

in which Waypoint

0:13

and friends are

0:26

working

0:29

through the filmography of Michael Mann and examining

0:32

his themes of labor and craft, capitalist oppression

0:34

and dudes rocking. Today, I'm

0:36

joined by Alex Navarro, as D. Alessina

0:39

warned us that with Johnny Depp being

0:41

famously litigious, she did not think Vice

0:43

Legal would appreciate some of the

0:45

thoughts and observations she might

0:48

be moved to offer on the actor's life and career

0:50

since making Public Enemies in 2012. Which

0:52

I think

0:55

we can both certainly respect.

0:56

Yes, we

0:58

are going to we're going to see this project through

1:01

and we will just we will just deal with

1:03

the toxic movie star in the room

1:07

as as we must.

1:09

So let's talk for a second

1:11

about what you might assume Public Enemies

1:14

is especially based on its marketing and

1:16

what movie man actually made.

1:19

At first Public Enemies seems like

1:21

it might be heat, but in the

1:24

1930s, Depp is sort of at the

1:26

height of his post Pirates of the Caribbean

1:28

stardom, plays infamous

1:30

Depression era bank robber and noted

1:32

Hoosier, John Dillinger. It's very weird

1:34

that this entire movie takes place

1:37

within like 20 minutes of where I grew up like

1:39

this every with the exception of the Florida

1:41

sequence, this entire movie is

1:43

like parts of Indiana that are my

1:46

backyard. Christian Bale

1:48

also at or near his career

1:50

Zenith plays Melvin Purvis, a foundational

1:53

legend of the FBI, who is often

1:55

remembered as the hardened gunman that did the actual

1:58

crime fighting that established the FBI. reputation

2:00

as an elite law enforcement agency that

2:03

J. Edgar Hoover rode into a lifetime

2:05

of political power and influence.

2:08

The story of public enemies seems, uh,

2:10

then like it

2:11

might be the familiar master cop

2:14

versus master criminal framework that is such

2:16

a favorite of man's. Except

2:18

that's not really what public enemies

2:21

turns out to be. Instead

2:23

in places it is like a more kinetic,

2:27

uh, the assassination of Jesse, Jesse James

2:29

by the coward Robert Ford, in which

2:31

over the course of more than two hours you watch the new

2:34

Titan on Dilliger and the entire class

2:36

of criminal he represents while Purvis

2:38

proves to be a sign of things to come. A

2:41

morally hollow, dubiously competent

2:43

careerist who finds himself in the

2:45

service of a crypto-fascist and leading

2:47

a unit of goons. Uh,

2:49

in many ways this is a bleak

2:52

movie, uh, and at times

2:54

also an austere one and maybe sometimes even

2:56

hard to see as a long

2:58

time man collaborator Dante Sponotti,

3:01

uh, enters the digital era with a film

3:03

whose violent black nights set the tone

3:06

for the moral chaos and confusion that encompasses

3:09

its characters. Uh, Alex,

3:11

I think this is one

3:11

of the man films you said you saw once and

3:14

had not watched since. So I am curious

3:16

what impression you had of the film, uh, the

3:19

first time you saw it

3:20

and then sort of what you found

3:22

on, on revisitation. So

3:24

I think it actually came out in 2009 and

3:27

I remember that because I think I

3:29

saw this movie when I was living in Boston

3:32

working at harmonics and

3:34

it

3:35

is my, my rec,

3:37

my recollection is going to the theater,

3:39

seeing it with some friends

3:41

and walking out of the theater, remembering

3:43

almost nothing that I had just watched and

3:47

watching it again for this,

3:49

which is, this is the first time I've tried to watch it. It

3:52

was 2009. I don't know where 2012 came from,

3:54

but it was, uh, that whole like five

3:56

year block between 08 and 2013 is kind of a block.

3:59

black box for me. It's like every they

4:02

all might as well blend together. But

4:06

I have not seen it in full in

4:08

the time since then I've seen little bits and pieces

4:10

of it rewatched a couple of scenes here and there when they

4:12

were on TV. But like this is my first real rewatch.

4:16

I think this movie is ass. And

4:19

I mean that in almost

4:21

totality.

4:23

There the pitch here of depression

4:26

era heat guys I think is a compelling

4:28

one.

4:29

I think putting in the same breath as something

4:32

like the assassination of Jesse James is

4:34

not an unreasonable thing to

4:36

do because it is scratching

4:38

at some of the same ideas. But the

4:41

follow through here on both the pitch

4:43

and that concept is

4:46

borderline incompetent in places.

4:49

And it's not even really the

4:51

performances though I don't think any

4:54

of the actors in this movie are availing

4:56

themselves particularly well here. Maybe

4:59

Stephen Lang

5:00

as the hard nose Texas law man

5:02

has a few

5:05

moments here and there. But

5:07

by and large I feel like everyone

5:09

in this movie is on autopilot most

5:11

of all Michael Mann himself

5:14

to the point where it feels like at times

5:16

watching this movie he is covering his older

5:19

better movies with a shittier backing

5:21

band.

5:22

And then you throw

5:25

in the digital photography of this movie

5:27

which while I am generally

5:31

forgiving of early digital

5:33

and this is not even early early digital this is

5:35

like slightly better than early digital

5:37

because we're a few years past the

5:40

you know the early 2000s implementation

5:42

of the technology parts of this

5:44

movie are straight up illegible especially

5:47

anything that takes place in the dark

5:49

but like a lot of the action scenes

5:51

where the camera is jittering around like crazy

5:54

it just ghosts every image

5:57

on the on the screen and everything feels

5:59

like it is a weird blur, which

6:02

is fitting in a way for the actual

6:04

end results of the movie, which feels like a bunch

6:06

of stuff happened and none of it stuck.

6:09

So that's

6:11

certainly how I, that was my

6:13

reaction the first time I saw it. When I saw it,

6:17

I was so

6:18

hyped for this movie, I was like, honey,

6:21

we're going to the theater. It's gonna

6:23

be, you know how I've made you

6:25

watch Heat a few times, it's

6:28

gonna be like that, but. Real

6:30

delirious. Yeah, it's gonna be just incredible.

6:33

And I watched it in

6:35

a Cineplex in Wisconsin, I think

6:37

it was the one last things we saw before we moved out East.

6:40

And

6:42

I remember in particular, like

6:47

nothing was really grabbing me, but

6:49

it was the shootout in the woods in Wisconsin,

6:51

the little Bohemia, like gun

6:54

battle, where I was like,

6:56

I don't know what is happening. This entire

6:58

thing is a hallucination. It

7:00

is just like gun flashes and

7:02

then pitch black frame, shaky cam,

7:04

lurching in every direction, couldn't

7:08

tell you what's going on. And then it did

7:11

feel like man,

7:13

and it still kind of feels like this,

7:17

man is kind of chasing the story he wants

7:19

to tell because it feels like midway through,

7:22

he wants to do a different movie

7:24

than he started out making. And

7:28

it is a movie of parts. And in

7:31

some ways it feels like

7:34

midway through, he alights on

7:36

a couple different concepts of what the direction

7:38

of the movie could have gone. But

7:41

the sum effect is that

7:44

there's a bit of thematic incoherence

7:46

here.

7:47

And that

7:49

was the impression that stuck with

7:51

me for a long time, but here

7:53

is the thing. On like revisiting

7:56

it this past week,

7:59

by how much I've turned around on

8:01

this movie. In the years. Interesting.

8:04

What is it do you think that most turned

8:07

around for you? Because I, if

8:09

anything, I feel like I tumbled down further in

8:11

the opposite direction. So,

8:14

okay, I'm gonna be, we're gonna

8:16

enter the trust tree a little bit. Okay.

8:19

As you know, occasionally we use a cool

8:21

hacked PS2 for various things,

8:25

you know, that we stream on Waypoint. With

8:27

this, I acquired a cool copy

8:29

of Public Enemies that

8:32

may have made some adjustments to the Blu-ray

8:35

transfer. It is possible, because I don't

8:37

remember it being quite this legible as before.

8:39

Okay. But

8:41

part of it is, or the

8:43

other big change is this time I'm watching it on

8:46

my home theater, which is the OLED TV. It's

8:49

a pretty good setup. I was in a perfectly

8:52

dark room and suddenly things

8:54

that I thought were entirely legible

8:56

landed for me, completely.

8:58

Okay. And I was like, oh,

9:01

Spenoti

9:02

is back and he's still a genius. It's

9:05

just, I couldn't make out what

9:07

he was doing before because like the projection

9:09

was bad. This seems like a recurring issue

9:12

in the digital era, right? You will get things

9:14

like famously the Game of Thrones thing where it's like,

9:16

yes, people involved in that shoot swore

9:18

up and down that like, it looks good

9:21

in screening rooms. It looked like the

9:23

battles look great, you

9:25

know, from what they saw and then in streaming

9:28

it was destroyed and

9:31

things can go wrong with transfers

9:32

as well. And so it is possible

9:35

that like, this is

9:37

what was shot is a movie

9:39

that like really can strike

9:42

you as visionary in like almost lab

9:44

conditions or a complete mess

9:47

in

9:48

the locations that most people are screening

9:50

films, which for me, like a multiplex

9:53

in Wisconsin was not tuned

9:55

to show this movie off to best effect. But

9:57

like, I was really stunned by how much

9:59

of this movie, like the visual style of it that

10:02

I hated, I suddenly was like,

10:05

Oh, this is this is terrific.

10:07

This this is like incredible

10:09

work.

10:10

Okay, this might be owed

10:12

to like us watching different versions. The watch

10:15

version I watched was just the straight up blu ray version that

10:17

is that is out there now. There is no 4k

10:19

edition HDR version that I'm aware of at

10:21

this point. But

10:23

the thing

10:25

I kept running into is it's not

10:27

just legibility. That's a problem for me

10:30

with the look of this movie.

10:31

Like yes, they're like the shootout

10:34

scene distill does not look great to me

10:36

in its current version. And

10:38

I think that you know, again, some of the darkings

10:41

darker scenes like just they

10:42

blur in a bad way. But

10:45

the bigger issue I think for me is

10:48

that

10:48

a lot of the scenes that even are

10:51

in the daylight where they are going heavier

10:53

on the digital versus like the very clean

10:56

looking like I assume it's all

10:58

digital, but there are certain scenes that look more handheld

11:00

than others.

11:02

And anytime they cut to the more handheld

11:04

looking cameras,

11:05

and you have these people in these costumes and they're

11:08

acting ish throughout

11:10

the film, it straight up feels

11:12

like

11:13

true crime TV reenactment shit.

11:16

Like the look of it feels cheap.

11:18

The care like because nobody is really performing

11:22

in a way that feels like big Hollywood acting.

11:25

It all has this very reenactment feel

11:27

to it. That is just kind of cheap

11:30

and feels way out of step with

11:32

how

11:33

even the most antiseptic Michael Mann

11:35

movies up to this point have felt to me like

11:38

it all feels small. And that

11:40

is not what I want from this big

11:43

sweeping gangster story that

11:45

is trying to touch on

11:47

these cultural elements of

11:49

you know, what Dillinger meant to America at this

11:52

time? What was the FBI at this time?

11:54

It feels like this incredibly small

11:56

scale almost dinner theater like a production

11:59

of it.

12:00

So we'll

12:01

come back to the gun battles in a second, because

12:04

I hear

12:05

what you're saying, but I

12:08

think part of it is just the scale at which the movie operates,

12:10

and I also feel there's other stuff at

12:13

work. But

12:15

let's talk about the

12:16

first half of the movie here,

12:18

the first third really,

12:20

sets up a film that you're not going to end

12:23

up watching, which is kind of an odd thing. Like

12:25

you, it opens on

12:27

a prison break, and

12:29

the other thing I'll mention here is,

12:33

man can be a stickler for historical accuracy,

12:36

but also this is a wildly fictionalized

12:38

movie. Like little weird little details

12:40

are correct, and then massive

12:43

amounts of things have been rewritten,

12:46

and like sort of changed

12:48

in terms of where- Heavily dramatized. Yeah,

12:50

like, you know, for instance, like

12:53

Babyface Nelson, for instance, doesn't

12:57

die in the shootout in Little Bohemia.

12:59

Actually, he dies after Dillinger. He's

13:01

run to ground in Barrington, Illinois,

13:03

actually. So like

13:06

the entire,

13:07

that entire gun battle, which was pretty much

13:09

the chaotic nightmare that it's shown in the film,

13:12

doesn't have any of the resolution that it has in the film.

13:14

It doesn't, like there was no, like

13:17

the narrative of these gangsters on the run, they

13:19

didn't catch anybody. And

13:21

so narratively, it's fitting to

13:23

have Nelson presented as

13:25

sort of the depression era Wayne grow

13:28

to Dillinger's like Cawley,

13:31

but historically that's just not how it works out. No,

13:34

and I think that's where I, one

13:36

of the bigger issues

13:37

I have with the screenplay is that

13:39

it feels like it is trying to jam

13:41

these real life figures into a format

13:45

that man is already very familiar

13:47

with,

13:48

and it struggles against that.

13:52

And in the

13:54

first third there, we

13:57

open with basically the assembly of the

13:59

Dillinger's. in this prison break,

14:03

which turns into, as

14:05

you might expect, a wild gun battle, because

14:08

again, there's a hothead in the mix. But

14:11

concurrently with that, we are introduced

14:13

to Christian Bale's Melvin

14:15

Purvis, who, okay,

14:18

what is the

14:20

name of the song? 10 Million Slaves?

14:23

I believe so, yeah. It was a short

14:25

of a weird,

14:30

it was a weird,

14:32

powerful hit of

14:35

the time. Man loved it, apparently. It was

14:37

just like, this is the sound of this movie. So

14:40

we open, we get him running to ground,

14:44

Channing Tatum playing Pretty

14:46

Boy Floyd, and him running him

14:48

to ground in sort of an

14:50

apple orchard. And

14:54

what is set up there is sort of this,

14:57

you know, oppositional figures, right? You have Dillinger

14:59

on the one hand, the fiercely loyal

15:02

mastermind who gets his buddies out of prison,

15:05

you know, doing this raid. And

15:07

then you have Bale who's shown, quite

15:10

pointedly, he's a hunter of men,

15:11

a manhunter, if you will.

15:14

He's got an

15:16

odd little rifle that seems to

15:18

have like a dual trigger to do

15:20

a hair trigger release type thing, and

15:22

odd little detail that man throws in there. But

15:25

he just coolly guns down Floyd, like

15:28

shooting a deer at like 150 yards.

15:32

And- That did not happen though, in real

15:34

life, did it? I don't think so. No,

15:37

I think what happened was they were pursuing

15:39

him, but it was multiple people

15:42

that shot him. And I'm not even sure that Purvis

15:44

was one of them.

15:46

Yeah, and like, you

15:48

know, the,

15:50

not all the characters who were present at

15:53

the like little Bohemia gun battle

15:55

were there. Yeah. It's constant.

15:58

There's like constant sort of-

15:59

like

16:01

tweaks to the story. But

16:04

the idea is that this is the guy who's going to be hunting

16:06

Dillinger. This is

16:09

sort of the cold killer

16:12

that is going to be set on the trail

16:15

of John Dillinger.

16:16

And

16:20

the person that's going to set him

16:22

on this trail

16:23

is Jade Gerhuver. And

16:26

we are sort of introduced to him at

16:29

a congressional hearing where

16:31

basically he is being grilled

16:33

by congressmen who

16:35

are pointing out that like

16:37

he's never been a cop, he's a bureaucrat

16:40

and he appears to be in over his head.

16:42

And he is asking for

16:45

wild budgets to create the national

16:48

law enforcement agency that he

16:50

dreams of. And he has

16:52

no real credibility in

16:55

this time.

16:56

So that's kind of the stage that

16:59

man is setting where

17:01

it's going to be this sort of pursuit between

17:04

these two guys against the backdrop of

17:06

Hoover's ambitions.

17:09

And it kind of works until

17:11

I feel

17:12

like at some point

17:15

either in making this or in the script,

17:19

man decides purpose is not interesting.

17:22

And you can't blame him, but

17:24

he also, but it's your movie.

17:26

And I think part of it is,

17:29

here's the thing I like about this decision.

17:34

Purvis in this film

17:37

is not

17:38

Al Pacino's character. He's not Will

17:40

Graham either. Like what we discover is that

17:42

he's kind of a moral coward.

17:44

And he's

17:46

a guy who what few principles he appears

17:48

to have go over the overboard.

17:50

The minute Hoover is like, you know what we should do

17:53

is torture.

17:54

What we should do is, you know,

17:57

make like we're all little Mussolini's.

18:01

And at that point,

18:03

man unfortunately I think kind of loses interest

18:06

in the character rather than explore this

18:08

theme further, which is that he's not a super cop.

18:10

He's a violent, like

18:13

he's a bureaucrat who kills people and he's

18:15

like violently ambitious, but he's

18:17

not

18:17

a hero in the story. But

18:19

it's like once man decides he's not the hero of the

18:22

story, he

18:23

doesn't need to be in the story at all.

18:26

Yeah, and it's,

18:28

so it's like you can go two ways with

18:30

this character, right? Like you can go

18:32

the Elliot Ness, like untouchables

18:34

route and make him into the shining

18:37

hero, the sort of like, you

18:39

know, the ultimate, you know,

18:42

depression era gunfighter law man

18:44

type, which Purvis I don't think

18:46

necessarily fits into and Bale's

18:48

performance certainly does not fit into. Like

18:51

he is, as much as it pains

18:53

me to say this as someone who generally likes

18:55

Christian Bale's acting, he is no Kevin

18:57

Costner in this movie. And

19:00

the other way you can go with it is the really

19:04

in-depth

19:05

haunting portrait of a conflicted

19:07

figure like you do in something like assassination

19:10

of Jesse James, where Robert Ford, who

19:12

is sort of the, you know, the counter and the foil

19:14

to Jesse James and toward

19:17

the end of the film especially,

19:19

he gets a complete portrait in that

19:21

film and is given a humanity

19:23

and a driving force and an understanding

19:27

that makes centering the story on him and

19:29

not someone like necessarily Jesse James, who is already

19:31

a very charismatic figure, work.

19:34

And it goes neither

19:36

of those directions. It starts out with this

19:38

idea that maybe Purvis

19:41

will start to run into some static when he

19:43

runs up against the kind of folk-like

19:46

heroism that people are imprinting

19:49

upon John Dillinger and people of his ilk

19:51

during this time,

19:53

and also the conflicts he has with

19:55

Hoover. But

19:57

it completely abandons that stuff.

19:59

all you're left with is this really limp,

20:03

bad Southern accent that

20:05

occasionally shows up to shoot people. That's

20:08

it, that's the performance and that's the character.

20:11

Yeah, and I think this is,

20:14

like there's a part of me that

20:16

still finds it,

20:21

this is gonna sound like blatant apology, but

20:23

I do sort of like read

20:26

it this way in some ways.

20:28

I kind of like

20:31

how much he sort of shrinks

20:33

in this movie's estimation in part because

20:36

here's one thing I see when I look at this movie now.

20:39

So I think

20:41

Man is very much like Dylan

20:43

juries his Jesse James, but

20:45

I think the story he's telling when it comes to the

20:47

law men side of this reminds me a lot

20:50

of another movie from this era that

20:53

also kind of gets overlooked, which is De Niro's

20:55

The Good Shepherd,

20:57

where you have Matt Damon playing

21:00

James Jesus Angleton, who was the head

21:02

of CIA counterintelligence for

21:04

years and sort of legendarily became

21:09

a paranoid destructive figure within

21:11

the CIA because he like,

21:16

it's not just a trope in espionage

21:18

fiction, this is also like the

21:20

spy world. Counterintelligence

21:23

is a field that draws

21:25

in weirdos and it involves a

21:27

lot of like double think and such. And so that

21:29

movie ends up being a portrait of like the

21:32

creation of the security state and

21:34

the kind of people who were behind that

21:37

who

21:38

in this movie that De Niro made

21:40

are all just incredible creeps. That

21:43

like The Good Shepherd is

21:45

basically about how America is kind of taken

21:47

over by

21:49

vicious like sociopathic

21:52

wasps.

21:53

And there's a

21:55

great scene in that. He brings Joe Pesci

21:57

out for when,

21:59

is dealing with the mob. And Pashy

22:02

talks about how every immigrant in

22:04

America has some sort of touchstone that they

22:07

bring with them, some sort of cultural centerpiece and what

22:09

have you got. And Matt

22:11

Danitz, Angleton says, we have the United

22:13

States of America. The rest of you

22:15

just live here, which is an incredible

22:18

moment in that movie. But that was not a popular movie,

22:20

I think, because it

22:22

was such an unheroic and grim

22:24

portrait. It was cynical. Yeah.

22:29

You come away from that movie,

22:31

it's not necessarily that those guys won, but

22:34

the things they built endured. Angleton's

22:36

career may have ended in kind of disgrace, but

22:40

the CIA and that

22:42

legacy is still with us. And I think...

22:44

Yeah, the institution is still there in

22:47

all its glory.

22:50

And I've also read this

22:52

movie and

22:55

the Good Shepherd as being sort of this,

22:58

the lost Obama era reckoning, the reckoning

23:00

that never was,

23:01

where you have this awareness now

23:04

of

23:06

how filthy the Bush administration

23:08

was and how excessive

23:11

the war and terror became.

23:15

And nobody was ever brought to justice

23:17

for it. Nobody's ever held accountable for it.

23:19

And I think one of the things that,

23:22

when I look at this movie, I see

23:24

that

23:25

initially we are sort of set up

23:27

to regard Purvis and Christian Bale

23:30

as like, this

23:32

is going to be the master cop

23:34

or he's our Jack Bauer, et cetera.

23:38

And he isn't. He's not

23:40

good at his job.

23:41

He swaggers around like he's an elite cop,

23:44

but he is in over his head.

23:46

When faced with a

23:49

moral

23:50

choice about what kind of man

23:52

he is going to be to advance his own career, he

23:56

looks troubled, but green

23:58

lights.

23:59

like truly vicious assaults

24:02

on prisoners.

24:03

And, you know, does nothing

24:06

about it. And at the various points

24:08

where he has brought, like when he has brought face

24:10

to face, when he has plunged into these gun battles, he

24:13

sucks at them. He's,

24:16

you know, he leads failed operations

24:18

right and left. Stephen Lang's

24:20

character is like the real, like

24:22

hardened gunman of

24:25

the FBI side. And he's, he sizes

24:27

up very quickly that like Purvis is not it.

24:30

Purvis is a self-dealing

24:32

careerist.

24:34

And in some ways, like

24:36

I find it kind of fitting

24:38

that he just kind

24:41

of disappears in this movie because

24:44

once he has failed to bag

24:47

Dillinger at Little Bohemia,

24:49

once he is thrown in completely

24:51

with sort of the, the torture

24:54

agenda that

24:56

Hoover is pushing,

25:00

he's such a diminished figure, there's nothing for

25:03

him left to do. And

25:05

so like, I've always kind of liked the way

25:07

he, the way he sort of shrinks down on this

25:09

in part, because I feel like some

25:11

of what is going on here is we are conditioned

25:14

as a

25:15

exercise in the genre

25:17

to expect that like,

25:18

and here's our super cop.

25:20

And this is a story of like the elite kick ass,

25:22

like, you know,

25:24

detective unit on the, on the case.

25:27

And what happens every turn in this is

25:30

they're demonstrated just be, just be terrible

25:32

at all of this. And I think something

25:34

that man is maybe doing in this film is sort

25:36

of making this argument that

25:40

these sort of the mythic figures,

25:42

they tried to become to sort of sell this

25:45

idea that like the FBI was anything other

25:47

than a reactionary, like

25:49

fascist organization. It's

25:52

all bullshit. Yeah. That

25:54

the, that the rot was there all the way through.

25:56

You're right about that aspect though.

25:58

I think the problem.

25:59

is that

26:01

even while I think the correct decision

26:03

is to not portray Purvis as

26:05

the shining, you know, lawman that he

26:07

clearly was not, I

26:09

don't think the movie is good enough about

26:11

getting that point across to make it feel like

26:13

it is an intentional story choice

26:15

and not just the screenplay losing

26:18

sight of what it even wants to do by the

26:20

time it gets toward its conclusion.

26:22

Like,

26:23

the Purvis stuff,

26:25

again, part of it is the Bale performance, which

26:27

I feel like even you can feel the enthusiasm

26:29

he has for the character, like

26:32

dipping and ducking at various times

26:34

throughout the film. And it's not just him

26:36

portraying a guy who was conflicted, it literally

26:38

feels like the actor just being uncertain if what

26:41

the hell he's even supposed to be doing in the scene.

26:43

But it's

26:45

just it's all a little too flat. And

26:47

it's all a little too non committal

26:50

in terms of like how it wants to tell that

26:52

story. Like,

26:54

all the the Hoover stuff

26:56

feels so superfluous in the

26:58

end. And I can't believe I'm saying that about a Billy

27:01

Crudup

27:01

performance as J Edgar goddamn Hoover.

27:04

He's just doing an impression in this movie.

27:06

There is there's no performance, there's no character.

27:09

It's an it's the voice. And that

27:12

is that was very well. He does newsreel

27:14

bit. It's like damn.

27:16

But there's like, there's nothing there's no insight

27:18

into Hoover or his fascism or his,

27:21

you know, like anything about him that

27:23

we haven't learned in 100 other

27:25

better movies than this one. And

27:28

the thing is, if you want Purvis

27:30

to take this backseat toward the end

27:32

of the story, you really need

27:34

to have a compelling counter

27:37

story going on in the background,

27:39

the thing that makes the Purvis stuff less important.

27:43

And it doesn't. The Dillinger

27:45

story as told in this movie

27:48

is just bland. Like

27:51

there is there is no real

27:53

insight here,

27:54

as far as like what it meant for Dillinger

27:57

to be this almost folk hero like

27:59

figure.

27:59

in the context of the era he was in and the

28:02

crimes he was committing. They give you

28:04

the the nitty gritty

28:07

business details of why people

28:09

like him were able to operate the way

28:11

they were for it with impunity for as long as they

28:13

were and how that all changed when

28:15

the you know the cross state federal crime

28:18

laws started to come around. But

28:20

that stuff isn't interesting enough on

28:23

its own. It needs compelling characters

28:26

to make you care when everything

28:28

starts falling apart for them.

28:30

And look, whatever you want to

28:32

fucking say about Johnny Depp at this point as

28:34

a as a person and as a performer.

28:37

There are performances of him I will

28:39

defend and say this is great acting.

28:42

This is not one of those by any

28:44

stretch. It's not his worst performance either.

28:47

But his vision of Dillinger

28:49

is just a little bit

28:51

of a salty guy. And maybe that's what

28:54

Dillinger was. But

28:55

compared with something like what Brad

28:58

Pitt does with Jesse James and again,

29:00

I hate to keep coming back to this movie because Jesse

29:02

James is a much better movie. Yes, but they

29:04

are trying to operate on similar levels.

29:07

Jesse, you understand how Jesse James

29:10

was a charismatic leader

29:12

of his men. And why people looked

29:14

at his outlaw ways as something other

29:16

than a blight on society like

29:18

why people would get behind him, why

29:21

people would treat Robert Ford the way they did after

29:23

he killed him.

29:24

There's none of that here. His

29:27

gang is a empty set

29:29

of dudes who

29:31

one of them who kind of looks like Michael

29:33

Mann, by the way, he seems to have

29:35

a somewhat close relationship with Oh,

29:38

Jason Clark. Yeah, the Jason Clark character,

29:40

the rest of them are just guys. And

29:42

you don't care about them. You don't care about what

29:45

happens to them when they die. And

29:48

by the end, the relationship he has with Mary

29:50

and Catalyard who I will say is doing her absolute

29:53

best to try to not be French and

29:55

is 70% maybe

29:58

of the way there. Their

30:00

relationship means nothing to anyone

30:03

by the time that movie wraps up. I felt

30:05

bad for her character with the

30:07

ringer they started putting her through, but I

30:09

felt worse for her than I ever did anyone

30:11

else in this movie. I did not care

30:14

about what happened to John Dillinger by the time

30:16

it finally got there.

30:18

Yeah, I um...

30:23

Gosh, I uh... I'm thinking about

30:25

the Dillinger stuff for a bit. I

30:28

think... I

30:30

definitely feel like one thing that is badly

30:33

lacking is this... There's a lot of referral

30:35

to this

30:36

broader court of public opinion. Uh,

30:38

cause in some ways... Yeah, they show it at the beginning when like he's

30:41

taking up in that farmhouse and that lady... Mr.

30:43

Take Me With You. Yeah, Mr. Take Me With You. And

30:46

it's a great shot. It's like, man, like he's like, I want

30:48

to do a Dust Bowl, Grapes of Wrath, like...

30:50

Yeah. Or he just saw Carnival and

30:52

was just like out of his mind and I'm like, hey, that's... You

30:54

know, it's a good moment, but it's kind of out of context in nowhere. Especially when

30:56

the kid walks into frame, you're like, oh, you were willing

30:58

to throw it all away here. Okay.

31:01

Yeah. And it's a great

31:03

moment, but it's like the only nod

31:06

we have to how he becomes a

31:08

folk hero. And I'm just not sold on like, but

31:11

why? Like, why is this so compelling

31:13

to people that this figure

31:15

is out here doing this? Like, what... And

31:17

I think something... Maybe

31:20

it is easier to ask this now with the advantage

31:22

of just how a lot of us have come to reappraise.

31:26

How police are portrayed.

31:28

But

31:29

I feel like, again, there's things

31:32

this movie comes up to the...

31:35

Right up to the line of examining, which is, this

31:37

is a foundational era for the cops and robbers

31:40

myth, right? Yeah. Like, this is... Totally.

31:42

Like,

31:43

you know, if you think about how people regarded

31:45

the cops before like

31:47

World War II, effectively,

31:50

it was not a particularly...

31:52

Like, yes, we still made a lot of movies about cops and

31:55

shit. But like,

31:56

police were not popular for a...

32:00

long time in the United

32:02

States and

32:04

somewhere in this they get valorized

32:07

and

32:08

you know they turn into the whole

32:10

like public enemies list becomes a

32:12

thing where here people that as a society we need

32:15

to cut out and our brave

32:17

uh you know champions of law and order are going to

32:19

be the the the people that do it

32:22

but the movie

32:24

doesn't

32:26

you know it doesn't really examine like how does the shift

32:28

take place like why did people

32:30

find what Dillinger was doing

32:33

so sympathetic and so exciting

32:36

and why

32:37

sorry go ahead and yeah and and why

32:40

was why did Hoover

32:42

why was Hoover so hell-bent on

32:44

creating a public image for a new breed of cop like

32:47

why were these important things totally

32:49

to be going on that era

32:51

and that's that's the thing is that like there

32:53

are individual scenes in this movie

32:55

where i feel like the the little threads

32:57

the ideas there that they are trying

32:59

to scratch at do get portrayed

33:02

in an interesting way but none of the

33:04

legwork is necessary to get the

33:06

like to get a point across beyond

33:08

what you are seeing in that single scene like

33:11

the two i think of most prominently for both

33:13

those points

33:15

the whole press conference scene where

33:18

uh uh uh Dillinger is

33:20

in the police station and he's got his arm

33:22

around

33:23

the fucking da and like

33:25

he's just you know rapping with the press like

33:28

that scene is great and it feels like it

33:30

wandered in from a totally different movie than

33:32

the one we have been watching up to that point

33:34

it's got little grace details like

33:37

the way he signals the end

33:39

of the press conference and like motions

33:41

the da to get it get him out of there like yeah

33:44

he are agent and it's

33:46

just it's terrific the way he like uh

33:49

that everyone is so starstruck by him that

33:51

he just like works this room and

33:53

that's the charm that is just totally

33:55

missing from the rest of that performance

33:58

is that i don't feel like Dillinger

35:58

Yeah,

36:01

is is pretty cool.

36:02

It is. And again, I think these individual

36:05

ideas, if better explored in

36:07

the movie are make for a really compelling

36:09

portrait of like how America

36:12

and its law enforcement sort of came to become what

36:14

it was.

36:16

But the movie is constantly tumbling

36:18

over itself to either get to the next action

36:20

scene or try to draw out to the next big

36:22

plot point. And

36:24

so you get these little moments like the Junior

36:26

G men, the theater stuff,

36:28

you know, you could say that there's a little

36:30

bit of like with the torture stuff, like you could,

36:33

especially in 2009, you could say there's a little

36:35

bit of commentary on like the way the war on terror,

36:37

you know, like sort of fully embrace the

36:40

you know, the the hard line, you know, violent

36:42

tactics that were being employed there.

36:45

But then it also can't commit all the way

36:47

to it. You know, like there, that dude

36:49

is beating the shit out of Marion Catillyard

36:51

at one point. And then they have to have

36:53

their moment where purpose comes in. And even

36:56

if it is a limp thing he's doing, which is

36:58

to say he's after she's already had the shit

37:00

beaten out of her, he's just carrying her to the bathroom

37:02

so she can clean herself up. Like it's not a

37:04

heroic thing at all.

37:06

But it also feels like

37:09

that still trying to be like, no, this is actually the

37:11

bad guy who did this, you know, like

37:13

this is the really bad guy. These other cops are all

37:15

gawking and you know, gobsmacked that he would go

37:17

that far. And it's just like,

37:20

would they do that? Well, would they?

37:22

And I think the weird thing is man keeps finding

37:24

more compelling characters in the background of this. Like

37:27

the person actually stops the beating is Stephen Lang's character.

37:29

He walks into the room and like, and

37:31

that character you're sold on well enough that you

37:34

do believe that he doesn't know the shit is going

37:36

on and walks into the room

37:39

and it's just like, what the fuck

37:41

like he would intervene. But Purvis almost

37:43

like, of

37:44

course he knew the stuff was going on. He was encouraging

37:46

it. He just turned his back to the room and the guy

37:48

being like, tortured as he lay dying.

37:51

The other character that sort of

37:53

emerges from the background. I'm like, I want to

37:55

know more about her is the

37:57

secretary who is working with

37:59

the FBI unit and she is

38:02

overhearing a lot of what they are saying.

38:04

But there's a moment where she comes up

38:06

to Purvis and is like, I need to say something like

38:09

what they are doing simply not right. You

38:11

cannot treat a woman like this. And,

38:15

you know, for a

38:18

like you're immediately kind of like this is

38:20

a world that is completely dominated by white

38:22

men. And,

38:25

you know, to have this perspective

38:28

sort of introduced of like

38:31

here's a woman who just works there as like the

38:33

admin for this unit and

38:35

she has discovered that her secretarial

38:37

job is basically you're

38:40

working in like the basement

38:42

of the like

38:45

US, you

38:47

know, Gestapo.

38:48

Yeah.

38:50

And you mean like

38:52

I'd be taken with more exploration of that, but

38:55

we kind of we kind of move on. I

38:58

do want to talk about.

38:59

So one of the things

39:02

that transforms this movie, we've alluded to Stephen Lang's

39:04

character a few times. There

39:08

is a sequence that I really quite

39:10

enjoy and it's where I be like.

39:13

I do just like what Spinochi

39:16

is doing in this film, and

39:18

this is where they get a lead on

39:20

somebody being holed up in like

39:23

a town in a brownstone in Chicago. And

39:26

we're doing the misdirection where we've seen

39:28

diligent in a similar space, but it turns out they're not on

39:30

Dylans trail. They're on babyface, Nelson's.

39:34

And

39:36

they go into this hotel and it's like

39:38

this this sort of like rainy night. It's

39:41

dark and.

39:43

It is clear the FBI is like this is

39:45

their first like manhunt

39:48

in this in this way and

39:50

they're.

39:52

It's clear like you have the moment where Purvis

39:55

is trying to lay out the game plan, and it's clear

39:57

that they're not entirely confident about what their

39:59

role is or what. they're supposed to do, but

40:01

everyone just sort of like muddles along with it. But then they go into

40:03

the brownstone and the entire thing is

40:05

just like,

40:07

I don't think it comes

40:09

through in that scene is like,

40:13

like electric lighting of that era

40:16

is so weak and there's so little

40:18

of it. Like the weird colors

40:20

of like the entire place feels like this poisoned

40:24

like miasma that they're stepping

40:26

into. And it's all this like

40:28

Warren of like hallways and

40:31

stairwells and

40:33

just, it has the sense of it's a horror

40:35

movie moment. They're stepping into the killer's

40:38

house and they are completely unprepared for what they

40:40

will find there.

40:41

And Purvis has

40:43

that moment where he susses out that

40:46

Nelson

40:48

and his wife started giving him a song and dance and

40:50

he

40:51

pretends to buy it.

40:53

And then he leaves the guy posted

40:55

to while he goes and

40:57

sets the rest of the trap. And the raid goes

41:00

horribly wrong. This guy doesn't

41:02

stay put. He starts, he gets antsy

41:05

and starts trying to figure out what's going on.

41:07

He doesn't see the threat coming. He just gets killed, a gun

41:09

down in the hallway. And then we have the gun battle.

41:12

But I did enjoy like that

41:14

scene, for instance,

41:18

there are various modes where I think like Spinaudy

41:20

is trying to be like very cold and antiseptic and

41:22

documentarian. And here

41:24

he is in full, like,

41:27

I think he's trying to conjure the

41:29

sense of like terror and out of depthness

41:32

that like basically these

41:34

ambitious college kids

41:36

would have brought to like, you know, here you

41:38

are at this new fangled law enforcement agency

41:41

and you're going to take on some of those hardened killers

41:44

of the depression. Good luck. And

41:46

I think that comes across. Like that sequence

41:48

really worked for me the way it all falls apart.

41:52

It worked for me and I do like what it sets up, which

41:54

is, although it is

41:57

Bail's probably worst moment in this film, where

41:59

he... he tries to explain to Hoover

42:02

he needs, our kind

42:05

will not,

42:06

like that feels like the accent

42:08

is out of control. He's

42:10

lost in that scene. I like Bale

42:12

and I think he does an okay American accent.

42:14

He does not do a good Southern accent.

42:18

Well, like Hoover can't understand him over the phone.

42:21

And so you have this weird, like he sounds weird

42:23

and then Hoover's drawing attention to how weird he sounds.

42:25

Like, I don't know what you're saying. I took that

42:28

more to be that Hoover was trying to get him off the phone

42:30

and saying, I can't understand you as

42:32

in to say, like, I don't want to hear this anymore.

42:34

Stop telling it to me, but then Bale wouldn't drop

42:37

it. And I

42:39

think I kind of agree with you about

42:41

the Nelson scene and sort of the

42:44

way that thing falls apart. The problem is that

42:46

keeps happening in the movie over and over

42:48

again. Like he literally, there is almost a, I

42:51

mean, it's in a different location, but it is almost a

42:53

beat for beat similar same reaction

42:56

when that guy gets gunned down in the

42:58

lodge shootout.

43:00

I assume, I think

43:02

it's by Dillinger. Like,

43:06

he runs up to his colleague

43:08

the exact same way and borderline

43:10

says, I think almost the same line to him. Like,

43:12

who did it? Who gotcha? You know, something along

43:14

those lines.

43:16

And it just feels like the movie is

43:18

repeating itself in places where it could

43:20

have focused on other things that might

43:22

have made this story thread together

43:25

a lot better.

43:26

Well, and so the

43:28

takeaway from it is that Purvis decides I

43:30

need, basically

43:33

he needs like cowboys.

43:36

You know, he needs guys from like the front. He

43:38

needs Don Fry,

43:41

the MMA fighter. Okay.

43:43

He's one of Steven Lang's guys.

43:45

He's the guy with the big fucking severe

43:47

mustache. Oh, and then one of the other dudes

43:49

was a

43:50

character I know from a bunch of things, but he has no lines

43:53

in it. He's just completely like, I was like, oh yeah, that guy.

43:55

You nothing. He says, you don't want Don Fry

43:57

talking. So that was probably the right move

43:59

on that.

43:59

that front he mostly is just there to be an extremely

44:02

hard face that holds a gun but

44:04

that also means that there is a non-zero chance

44:06

that Michael Mann is a pride

44:09

guy he has seen pride you know

44:11

shoot fighting he may have seen fry versus

44:13

Takayama at some point

44:15

but you

44:18

know like what pervises solution

44:20

to this is again

44:22

I wish the movie brought this out more like

44:24

we

44:26

it's weird like the reason I know

44:28

why this is significant is because I do know

44:31

how much Hoover

44:32

fetishized college education

44:34

yes and like being of

44:36

good family the waspiness of

44:39

everything and the movie doesn't

44:41

bring across why that is like yes

44:43

his his accent does a lot to explain why

44:45

a guy who sounds like this is of course going to be

44:47

obsessed with like

44:49

the various status symbols that show you're the right

44:52

type of man but it doesn't

44:54

get across this notion that like

44:57

the thing that Hoover doesn't want

44:59

is

45:01

like the fucking flatfoot being the

45:03

image of like his new police force

45:05

you know he doesn't want it he

45:08

doesn't want a police force you know

45:10

filled the rafters with first and second generation

45:12

immigrants he wants

45:15

people with degrees with

45:17

like you know from prestigious universities

45:20

pervas was one himself but we don't know why

45:23

and and part of it is just

45:25

that he like this

45:27

is both how Hoover saw the world and

45:29

who should run it and then also

45:32

it was like necessary

45:34

to create this myth around well why is

45:37

the FBI different from other law enforcement organizations

45:40

we're smarter and more better where we're upper class

45:43

and what pervas is

45:45

getting at here is that

45:47

that ain't gonna cut it what we need are the

45:49

the last dudes who remember what the frontier was like

45:51

before it closed we need those

45:53

guys to show up we need that

45:55

we need the guys who are like you

45:58

know trailing guys into the backcountry

46:00

And so he gets a bunch of like hard

46:02

men from the West. And I think, again,

46:04

it would have been really interesting

46:07

if that were explored in more detail, but instead,

46:12

Stephen Lang is great. I like Stephen Lang a lot.

46:14

And I think what he does here,

46:16

cause he's so good at it. He's the only actor

46:18

in this movie that feels like he's fully dialed in to

46:20

what he's supposed to be doing.

46:23

But also it's like, because

46:25

him just being that dialed in and just showing

46:27

up and knowing exactly what he's about,

46:29

I've been obsessed with like, we've been

46:32

doing a painting for all, but he's like this really like effective

46:34

contrast in color

46:37

that because

46:40

he's such a strong contrast, it almost feels

46:42

like

46:43

man doesn't feel the need to flesh out

46:46

what this tension is between

46:48

like the two groups of law, like the two models of

46:50

law enforcement. That's just doesn't go there. There

46:53

might as well be no tension whatsoever.

46:55

Like if that was the intention was

46:58

to get

46:59

this contrast between, the

47:02

Ivy League law enforcement and the Texas

47:04

law man thing, the movie

47:07

all but abandons that almost from the moment they

47:09

show up. Because the entire

47:11

movie, it feels like those guys are in lockstep

47:13

with whatever purpose wants to do. The closest

47:16

you get to a counter thought

47:18

from Lang's character is that

47:20

it's toward the end when they're

47:23

talking about, what theater is he gonna go

47:25

to? And he's just like that, he ain't going

47:27

to no Shirley Temple movie. And it's like, yes,

47:30

you're right. And in any

47:32

movie where it felt like your character was

47:34

actually at odds with what was going on here,

47:37

that might've been a good appointed bit of dialogue.

47:40

But throughout the entirety of

47:42

every police operation that they were involved in.

47:45

No,

47:47

little Bohemia, he says this is

47:49

like, we shouldn't do this, this is gonna be a disaster. Like

47:51

he is- He does, but he goes all

47:53

in once they start going. And there's

47:55

never a point where he pulls Pervis aside and

47:58

said, I told you what was gonna happen here.

47:59

And by the next scene, like when

48:02

they're out of that gunfight, it just feels

48:04

like they're right back on the path again. So,

48:07

you know, maybe in part because of just

48:10

it being a period piece, but in a weird way,

48:14

you know Band of Brothers, right? The, you've seen

48:16

it? Yeah, I've seen it. You remember the Foy episode

48:18

where they got the new company commander who's like

48:21

the empty shirt? He's just, yeah.

48:24

In a weird way, like

48:26

what this, what Stephen Lane's character has stepped

48:28

into is that situation where like you

48:30

were called into this, effectively

48:32

it's like, you know, in a lot of ways this

48:34

could almost be a war movie. He's called into this

48:37

like war with the Dillinger gang. And

48:40

the officer leading

48:42

them is

48:43

a fraud, right? That

48:45

like Purvis is way

48:48

out of his depth. And we see that, you

48:50

know, that is, you know, certainly the

48:52

shootout in Little Bohemia

48:55

certainly like makes that clear, but

48:57

yeah, we don't get the payoff for

48:59

that, which is the

49:01

character we're introduced to and the way Stephen Lane sort of plays

49:04

him,

49:06

the interesting

49:09

conflict there in part

49:11

is that he,

49:13

like he is realizing that this,

49:15

like this guy ain't all he's cracked up to be, that

49:18

he is being pulled into

49:20

a unit that's dysfunctional. But

49:23

yeah, that doesn't emerge

49:25

as any kind of real

49:27

tension. I think maybe the only way it really pays off

49:30

is that by the

49:32

end, he seems pretty done with

49:34

the Purvis gang and is

49:37

like gives himself his own assignments

49:39

during the final like trap

49:42

for Dillinger and is the one who sort of brings the movie

49:44

to a close. He's given the last scene with

49:47

Billy.

49:50

The other thing that's

49:52

unfolding in sort of this first half of

49:54

the film

49:55

is yeah, we get a

49:58

lot of information about

50:00

And I do like this stuff about like,

50:04

at the start when Dillinger's stock is

50:07

high,

50:08

he can, he

50:10

goes to, I swear it's like, he's

50:12

in Chicago actually, Chicago, Indiana. The

50:16

local sheriff is guaranteeing

50:18

his safety.

50:19

Yes. And he is also,

50:22

he's also got a custom car guy who's

50:24

hooking him up with like the cars he'll

50:26

need to escape and like, he has all

50:28

these resources. He can just crash

50:31

in whenever he's in town.

50:33

There's an entire like logistical

50:36

like infrastructure supporting him.

50:38

And that is enabling him to

50:40

go on this crime spree. And then over

50:43

the course of this film, what we're going to see is

50:45

that stuff gets chopped away because

50:47

what is really underwriting that

50:49

is the fact that these are all like mobbed up towns.

50:52

They are all sort of outlying

50:55

duchies of the outfit

50:57

in Chicago.

50:58

Yeah. And the minute

51:00

that

51:01

the outfit realizes that

51:05

the type of crime that Dillinger represents

51:08

is small scale. Like in a weird way

51:10

that like Dillinger and his

51:12

gang are a bit like

51:15

the hunters and trappers of

51:17

last of the Mohicans, right? Like

51:19

they are being pushed out

51:21

because civilization or

51:25

as it is understood by diamond culture is

51:27

like on its way and their room to operate

51:30

is going to get narrower and narrower.

51:33

And so, you know, we get from

51:35

at

51:36

the start of the film, you have,

51:38

you know,

51:40

what's his name? DeAndre.

51:44

He played the

51:45

dude from Miami Vice, you know. Oh

51:48

yeah. John Ortiz.

51:50

John Ortiz's character goes

51:52

from, you

51:53

know, hey, whatever you need, you know, let us know if

51:56

there's any way we can help you to, when Dillinger

51:58

breaks out of the jail at Crown Point.

51:59

and is back on the run.

52:03

He explains that like

52:06

the Chicago outfit

52:07

is cutting Dillinger off. And

52:10

we have this scene that,

52:13

I love this scene where he

52:15

tries to explain the difference between

52:17

like

52:21

a decent payday and like being a capitalist in

52:23

some ways. Where Dillinger is trying

52:25

to explain why he's being cut off.

52:27

And he goes to the central

52:30

bookmaking operation that DeAndre

52:32

oversees and DeAndre explains to him,

52:34

he gives the speech, the river of

52:36

money speech. And we might drop

52:39

that into the episode here. What do you make $7,000 or $70,000 a job? We

52:43

make that in a day here. Yeah.

52:46

And, you

52:48

know, like,

52:50

unless the police come through that door and Dillinger

52:52

sort of completes the thought which you pay them not to do, unless

52:55

you're here.

52:56

And then they gotta come through that door.

52:59

And from that point,

53:01

like Dillinger is on his own. Like

53:03

he is, like now he is truly

53:05

an outlaw because he has no,

53:08

he has none of that infrastructure to rely

53:10

on anymore. And

53:12

so the various ways we see his

53:15

breed of criminal being

53:18

hunted by an increasingly like super

53:20

powered law enforcement apparatus, and

53:23

then sold out by

53:25

a form of criminality that is industrializing

53:28

effectively, and sees

53:30

no value anymore in the kind of bespoke

53:34

like craft scale of

53:37

robbery that Dillinger is engaging

53:39

in.

53:40

And I think that's the thing the movie is trying

53:42

to draw the parallels with. Like, you know,

53:44

in much the way the federal government was industrializing

53:47

law enforcement, you know, the

53:49

criminal organizations were also working in a similar

53:51

way. The problem is that like

53:54

the two parallel lines don't actually

53:56

line up parallel. Like, I

53:59

think that there's a lot of is like a little bit of

54:01

a eulogy here being said for a

54:03

certain kind of crime. But there isn't

54:05

really that much gesturing toward what

54:08

old world law enforcement was other than

54:10

the bringing in of the Stephen Lang character in his team.

54:13

I don't think that movie has enough

54:15

juice to really

54:17

portray much of that stuff in

54:19

a way that feels like it actually belongs

54:22

in that kind of storytelling.

54:24

I get a little bit of the you know the kind

54:27

of the old old type of crime is just no

54:29

longer you know it's it's no longer viable.

54:31

And the movie does do an okay job

54:33

at illustrating the ways that which both these characters

54:36

compromise themselves to try and

54:38

survive in a world that is changing around

54:40

them.

54:41

But it doesn't hit like it's just not

54:43

hitting in a way that feels

54:45

like it has any real poetry or

54:47

any real art to it. It is a very

54:50

artless way of delivering

54:52

that kind of message. And I think that

54:54

is the thing that is like the most striking to me

54:56

about this movie is that it all feels deeply

54:59

artless in the way that it wants to tell its story.

55:03

Yeah I don't know I think

55:06

I find a lot of the scenes effective but

55:08

I do see a point like the

55:12

film tries to like

55:14

join those two ideas toward the end where

55:16

Frank Nitti's on the phone with I think John Ortiz.

55:19

Yeah. And he says like don't you understand

55:21

that the like powers the FBI is granted

55:24

itself are going to be used against

55:26

us. Don't you see what what this means.

55:29

Which is kind of true except they didn't make a damn bit of difference

55:32

right. It wasn't until RICO laws much much later

55:34

that the F which

55:36

you know they may have been necessary for busting up the the

55:38

mafia but also turned like

55:40

they are kind of guilt by association laws.

55:42

Yes. In a lot like the RICO

55:45

laws are not a comfortable tool of law

55:47

enforcement like by any stretch

55:49

of imagination. But that's what really did it. It wasn't

55:51

like cross jurisdictional like

55:53

crime fighting ability.

55:56

It was that's not what stopped the

55:58

mob. The mob like flourished for.

55:59

for like 20, 30 more years.

56:02

It was other laws that sort of disrupted

56:05

its operations. The other thing that's

56:07

kind of missing in that story is,

56:09

and I think we actually see

56:11

men bringing up maybe a little more effectively when we

56:13

think about like

56:14

crime story, for instance, which is obviously got

56:16

a much larger canvas to work with in some ways. But

56:20

when Phil

56:23

D'Andrea is describing the

56:26

centralization of the bookmaking operations,

56:29

we get some scared in there is

56:31

the sheer amount of violence that that takes, that

56:34

sort of

56:35

is part and parcel of that. Well,

56:37

especially in consolidating all those

56:39

different bookmakers into the one

56:42

bookmaker.

56:44

Right, like the

56:46

thing that's missing from this is that the equivalent

56:48

to Dillinger for like bookmaking was

56:50

like

56:52

the big time, like local bookie, running

56:55

a sports book out of a bar or something like that. And

56:58

those guys either like get brought in or they get

57:00

shut down violently if

57:02

they don't go along with it, if they don't sort of

57:04

like bend the knee to the outfit. And

57:08

we do get that covered in

57:10

like crime story when we see that, you know,

57:14

who's the main crook?

57:16

Dan Sfrena.

57:17

No, not the cop. Oh,

57:19

the bad guy.

57:21

Yeah,

57:23

yeah. But his whole like his,

57:25

you know,

57:27

big idea is what if we just

57:29

took over all crime in the city

57:31

and forced everyone to pay a surcharge for every

57:34

bit of like fencing that they

57:36

do in town. And that's

57:38

kind of what the mob has done in

57:41

this period, but the thought isn't connected.

57:43

Like the line isn't

57:45

drawn between that sort

57:48

of like merciless industrialization

57:51

and the forces that like both have made Dillinger

57:55

and have sort of pushed him to the margins

57:57

of the world of crime.

57:59

Yeah.

57:59

And in a weird way, it feels like the movie has

58:02

too many ideas it wants to hit on, and it

58:04

never finds a way to effectively

58:06

focus on any of them. It's too many

58:09

threads that could all come

58:11

together into a really gripping crime

58:13

story. But even

58:16

within the two hours of this movie, which felt

58:18

a lot longer to me, honestly, it feels

58:22

like they are hopping, skipping, and jumping around

58:24

a lot of the actual material that would make this

58:26

stuff feel meaty and land in

58:28

a way that actually resonated beyond the

58:31

moment it happens. And

58:34

yeah, I don't know. I find myself,

58:37

the more I go back over it and the more I sort

58:39

of pour over the way the screenplay

58:42

especially is constructed, I

58:44

just think it's missing so many marks

58:47

every time. And like you said, individual

58:50

scenes sometimes are good and

58:52

sometimes gesture toward what

58:55

feels like the bigger points the movie wants

58:57

to make, but none of it connects.

59:00

And that is where I think it ultimately really

59:02

fails.

59:03

Yeah. And I think that

59:06

it kind of extends to one of

59:09

the other big plot points that's

59:11

unfolding here is the romance with Billy, between

59:14

Dillinger and Billy. And

59:17

I think part, there's this

59:20

era of a few years where

59:25

it's like everyone just decides we're going to cast

59:27

the same actor for a role

59:29

and Marion Cotillard was

59:31

that character for a

59:35

minute there. And

59:37

there's times it works really well,

59:40

I think, in some ways because there's so

59:42

little happening,

59:44

character wise and inception, that

59:46

the fact that she is sort

59:48

of this banshee in the

59:51

dreamscape of the film works

59:54

really, really well. But here,

59:58

in some ways, it does

1:00:01

kind of feel like

1:00:06

this movie was cast by throwing big names

1:00:08

in a

1:00:09

in a blender. Yeah. And assign

1:00:11

them different roles. And that's, and what's funny is

1:00:13

you could make the same critique of heat,

1:00:16

but

1:00:17

heat has a stable of character actors

1:00:20

and they're all sort of given like distinctive

1:00:22

personalities or they find distinctive personalities

1:00:25

that make the entire thing breathe. Like,

1:00:28

you know, again, rest

1:00:30

in peace despite like all the

1:00:33

conflicted

1:00:34

weirdness or I actually didn't die today.

1:00:36

Tom Sizemore is in the hospital, right? Yeah, he's in

1:00:38

the hospital. I don't know if I don't think he's bad.

1:00:41

Yeah. But

1:00:45

for all the issues

1:00:48

around Tom Sizemore over the years, he

1:00:51

was at the top of his game

1:00:56

and incredibly riveting character actor.

1:00:59

Oh, yes. And, and

1:01:01

so like that character on the page and he

1:01:04

doesn't really do shit. Like really like he's

1:01:06

got one good line. The action is the juice beyond

1:01:08

that. There's really nothing that character does. You don't forget

1:01:10

that character. No, it just, it just

1:01:12

works. And

1:01:14

for some reason it doesn't work here despite

1:01:16

all the star power, the sheer wattage

1:01:18

being thrown at this film.

1:01:20

Well, so that's the thing is that and

1:01:22

it's not helped by the fact that this movie

1:01:25

on multiple occasions literally

1:01:28

calls back to heat. There

1:01:30

is the part in the bank robbery where he sees the

1:01:32

guy put his money on the table is like, I'm not here

1:01:34

for your money. I'm here for the bank's money. You

1:01:36

know, like they're, they stopped just

1:01:38

short of having John Dillinger say for

1:01:40

me the action is the juice at least a few

1:01:42

times in this movie. Like there are

1:01:45

scenes and lines of dialogue that feel

1:01:47

like he is straight up covering heat

1:01:49

with different characters. But the

1:01:52

pro like and the thing you illustrated here I think

1:01:54

is the thing that ultimately sinks it.

1:01:57

Every actor in heat.

1:01:59

way down, even the worst performance

1:02:02

in Heat, feels like there is a

1:02:04

nugget of a character there that is

1:02:06

memorable.

1:02:08

Like, yes, Jon Voight

1:02:10

is just straight up doing Eddie Bunker, but

1:02:12

his Eddie Bunker is really fucking

1:02:14

good. Danny Trejo doesn't

1:02:17

even have a character name, they just gave

1:02:19

him his real name, and

1:02:21

I still remember the scene of

1:02:23

Danny Trejo whisper dying

1:02:26

in that house more than I remember

1:02:28

anything

1:02:29

in this movie.

1:02:31

And

1:02:32

the actors, while, you know, a

1:02:35

murderer's row of big names

1:02:37

here,

1:02:38

no one in this movie feels like

1:02:40

they have found the one thing,

1:02:43

be it a line of dialogue, be it a character

1:02:45

trait, be it something

1:02:47

that makes those characters pop

1:02:49

beyond whatever they're doing in that scene in that

1:02:52

moment. It's just none

1:02:54

of it's there. Steven Dorff, an actor I enjoy

1:02:56

quite a bit, usually

1:02:58

turns in something memorable even when

1:03:01

he's not in something great.

1:03:03

I legitimately forgot he was in this movie

1:03:05

twice before his character finally died,

1:03:08

because he has no interesting lines,

1:03:11

his character personality doesn't

1:03:13

exist beyond him apparently having slightly

1:03:15

rotten teeth. Like, there is just nothing

1:03:18

there for him to sink his teeth to or

1:03:20

work with.

1:03:22

None of the gang members. John Dillinger

1:03:24

himself is nothing more than a

1:03:27

occasionally charming but mostly kind

1:03:29

of gruff presence.

1:03:31

And the cops are even worse. Like

1:03:33

there isn't, I mean, we talked about who Purvis

1:03:35

is, and I understand that some of that probably is the

1:03:38

fraudulence of who that person was, but

1:03:40

the performance gives you nothing

1:03:42

to work with. It is not that you feel,

1:03:44

you don't even feel pity for him

1:03:47

at any point, you just kind of feel bored

1:03:49

every time Purvis is on screen.

1:03:52

And again, I think the only actor who

1:03:54

gets anywhere near that stuff is Lang,

1:03:56

and Lang still feels like he is doing a

1:03:59

riff on things he has done.

1:03:59

has done better in other movies.

1:04:03

Yeah, very, very much so, like.

1:04:06

Man, it's strange, the arc that

1:04:08

Lang has had given the

1:04:11

the callow,

1:04:13

shitheel character he plays in

1:04:15

Manhunter. Yeah. And then

1:04:18

the fact that he becomes Hollywood's go to

1:04:20

guy for do you want the scariest old

1:04:22

man? Yeah, just the hardest

1:04:25

motherfucker you can imagine

1:04:27

to like

1:04:28

come out of nowhere in this thing. It's like

1:04:31

Avatar, you know, he's the

1:04:33

like right. He's the head of the like the Marine contingent

1:04:36

in that memory serves. And

1:04:38

there's those horror movies that he's like the

1:04:41

crazy old man. And there's the what

1:04:43

is it? I can't

1:04:44

remember what those movies are called.

1:04:48

Yeah, but it's it's very

1:04:50

weird that like this is who he's turned into. But

1:04:53

he is very effortless for him. VFW

1:04:56

like he's doing a riff on that there, too.

1:05:02

And. By

1:05:04

contrast, I think this

1:05:07

is the.

1:05:11

The idea that I think

1:05:13

in some ways, man wants to explore what doesn't get explored

1:05:15

very much in heat,

1:05:16

which is here, you've got a woman who

1:05:18

has a very small life and

1:05:21

a very a very constrained set

1:05:23

of options. And

1:05:25

the

1:05:26

difference is, you know, in heat,

1:05:28

obviously, this woman's kind of duped into

1:05:31

like she just doesn't know what he does until it's too late.

1:05:33

Yeah. In this

1:05:35

this woman who sort of at no

1:05:37

point does he lie, he's very open from the first time

1:05:39

John Dillinger and I rob banks. This is his

1:05:41

this is his identity.

1:05:44

And she knows.

1:05:47

Or she at least firmly believes this is going to end

1:05:49

terribly. This guy is not

1:05:52

an escape to anything. He's not going like, you

1:05:54

know, we get some of the tension in their relationship

1:05:56

when they're down in Florida where she's

1:05:58

like, let's not pretend.

1:07:59

Delinger can turn on charm in

1:08:02

this film, like again, when he's working the press. Yeah.

1:08:05

But the way he is portrayed, the way man

1:08:07

in depth appear to have like converged on this

1:08:09

character, is that he is a

1:08:12

really dour figure

1:08:14

in a lot of ways that like he

1:08:17

rubs banks, but doesn't even like

1:08:20

bring him a lot of evident joy. You know

1:08:22

what I mean? It's like it's just a job

1:08:24

he is good at and he is going to

1:08:26

do it until he gets his big score and then he's going

1:08:28

to get out maybe. But

1:08:31

although even that is like a speculative heist

1:08:34

that he's working on toward the end of the film, but there's no real

1:08:36

sense of like this guy ever having an exit strategy

1:08:38

for this.

1:08:40

Like he eludes it having an exit strategy, but

1:08:43

I think maybe the more

1:08:46

accurate, like the more honest moment

1:08:48

from him is when he

1:08:49

in that scene in Florida

1:08:52

where she makes where she says

1:08:54

like inevitably this is going

1:08:56

to end. He's going to get caught and killed.

1:08:59

He makes the argument that actually

1:09:02

no, I'll just be better every time that

1:09:04

they, you know, that, you know, they

1:09:06

have to guard every bank. They have to be everywhere

1:09:08

at once. And I don't

1:09:10

that we can always choose where

1:09:12

and when we strike. And so he is

1:09:14

fully like he is fully given

1:09:17

over the hubris in this film. But

1:09:20

yeah, the relationship never it

1:09:22

doesn't really

1:09:24

resonate, though, does, I think, have one moment

1:09:27

later in the film when they're on the run that

1:09:30

that like she finally breaks free of

1:09:32

her FBI like tail and

1:09:35

they're reunited for one night and they end up on

1:09:37

a beach. I think it's like in the Indiana Dunes,

1:09:40

but they're alone there on the beach.

1:09:43

It's cold as hell

1:09:44

and they're in this like small pool of light

1:09:46

and talking

1:09:49

about like, you know, daydreaming about their future.

1:09:52

And it is such a bleak scene juxtaposed

1:09:54

against like

1:09:56

their happiness at their reunion that.

1:10:00

Again, the scene kind of works

1:10:02

for me because,

1:10:09

they're so evidently doomed, the darkness is all

1:10:11

encompassing around them and even

1:10:13

this little bit of sanctuary they have is

1:10:16

just this harsh little spotlight in

1:10:18

this cold night,

1:10:21

which I kind of like. So

1:10:23

to revisit the shootout

1:10:27

in little Bohemia.

1:10:36

So I

1:10:40

think for me, like

1:10:43

the choice that Mann and Spinautty make here

1:10:45

is

1:10:48

as we know from various things, Mann has said and

1:10:50

various commentary tracks, like he's always wanted

1:10:52

to like, I want to shoot night

1:10:54

like night, and it seems like Spinautty

1:10:57

was brought along for this as well, where like,

1:10:59

how

1:11:00

dark can we make a

1:11:03

movie?

1:11:07

How can we create

1:11:09

a shootout that takes place at night that doesn't look at

1:11:11

all like we're doing day for night shooting,

1:11:14

like it's gonna be dark and the gunshots

1:11:17

are going to be blindingly bright and that

1:11:19

juxtaposition is going to be where this film lives.

1:11:21

And I feel like

1:11:24

the entire shootout is designed

1:11:26

to be violent,

1:11:29

disorienting and incomprehensible.

1:11:35

But like for me, I think where I've ended

1:11:37

up now on this viewing is I

1:11:40

think it succeeds at those things in

1:11:42

a way that is really compelling and interesting

1:11:44

to me, but it is

1:11:46

like right on the verge because the first time

1:11:48

I saw it,

1:11:49

scene didn't scan at all.

1:11:52

This time now,

1:11:53

suddenly I feel like,

1:11:57

oh no, they largely pulled off this

1:11:59

video.

1:12:00

But the vision is not of a

1:12:03

big cool action set piece. It

1:12:06

is of a series of like desperate

1:12:08

misadventures by heavily armed

1:12:10

men in the woods.

1:12:13

I see what you mean. And

1:12:16

I do agree that like, and

1:12:18

here's the thing. I'm not looking for

1:12:20

a cool shootout from what is supposed to be a

1:12:22

cluster fuck. Like I totally get that.

1:12:25

And

1:12:27

I think that

1:12:28

they do to a point get across the notion

1:12:31

that like, not only are the cops like

1:12:33

acting like complete fucking idiots here,

1:12:35

but like, you know, the criminals are just doing

1:12:37

every desperate thing they can to get away

1:12:40

or, you know, to at least avoid getting shot.

1:12:43

And

1:12:45

it's not the chaos inherently

1:12:47

that I'm against in this shot. Because I think that, you

1:12:49

know, historically, that is what this shootout was.

1:12:52

It was a disaster. It was, you know, it did not go

1:12:54

well for anyone involved.

1:12:56

It's just that

1:12:59

they are hindering themselves

1:13:01

by,

1:13:03

because, okay, like go back to the

1:13:05

shootout in heat,

1:13:07

which is also a thing

1:13:09

gone deeply wrong.

1:13:11

That is a shootout where guys

1:13:13

that were expecting to get out clean are

1:13:15

suddenly now using automatic rifles

1:13:18

to gun down anyone who gets

1:13:21

in within, you know, hooves into field

1:13:23

of view of them while they are trying to make a

1:13:25

truly desperate escape. And

1:13:28

they cut around a lot in that shot. There is

1:13:30

a chaos element to it where you don't

1:13:32

necessarily know which cop cars are getting riddled

1:13:35

with bullets at any given moment. You don't

1:13:37

necessarily know who is getting shot and whether it's

1:13:39

fatal or not. But there is a legibility

1:13:42

to how that scene plays out where

1:13:44

you are gripped by it. You are

1:13:47

held hostage, essentially,

1:13:50

until it finally ends and the last gunshot

1:13:52

rings out. And you

1:13:54

feel like you've been put through the ringer and you're

1:13:57

there on the ground, like probably,

1:13:59

you know, huzzled. the sidewalk just

1:14:01

like sweating and uncomfortable.

1:14:05

This is just incoherent,

1:14:07

this scene. This is none of

1:14:09

that. There is no excitement, there is no ability

1:14:12

to grip the audience into what is actually

1:14:15

taking place. Part of it is

1:14:17

the digital photography, part of it is the editing,

1:14:20

but also the choreography of what is

1:14:22

actually taking place in this scene feels

1:14:25

disjointed and not in a way that is

1:14:27

intentional. It feels like they

1:14:29

are cutting around a lot of stuff and

1:14:32

I think what they are trying to say

1:14:34

is that this thing sparks off when some unrelated

1:14:37

guys get into a car and

1:14:39

don't respond to Purvis saying, stop

1:14:43

the car, and he ends up shooting

1:14:45

the car. The thing

1:14:47

is, the movie does a terrible

1:14:49

job of communicating the fact that they got

1:14:51

the wrong guys. They eventually

1:14:54

get to that backseat shot of the guy in the back

1:14:56

of the car and be like asking for help or whatever, but

1:14:59

it's in the middle of all

1:15:01

this chaos and it just didn't read

1:15:03

for me the first time at all. This

1:15:05

time, only after I rewounded a couple of times,

1:15:07

I was like, oh, that's what

1:15:10

happened.

1:15:10

Yeah, so I will say,

1:15:15

it scanned for me this time because I realized we

1:15:17

had that moment of they reconnoiter

1:15:20

the lodge a bit and they peer

1:15:22

into the dining room and they see those

1:15:24

guys being like, well, we gotta go to work, you

1:15:27

guys have a good night. And it

1:15:29

is not immediately clear

1:15:32

that they are not members of the gang or members of

1:15:34

the broader criminal fraternity that tends to give these

1:15:37

guys a shelter. And that is a little

1:15:39

bit of a problem just by virtue of the fact that every

1:15:41

guy in this era dressed in the exact

1:15:43

same suit and coat.

1:15:45

Yeah, and to me, I was

1:15:48

like, when

1:15:51

they opened fire in that car, I

1:15:55

don't think those guys were gangsters.

1:15:58

Yeah, but I did have to look up on. Wikipedia

1:16:01

whether or not they were gangsters, right? I

1:16:03

was like, so those guys were totally unrelated. And

1:16:05

famously, this is what happened, right? Yeah, they

1:16:08

ventilated three people who just happened to be

1:16:10

there. And

1:16:12

then completely botched the rest of

1:16:15

the raid. But

1:16:17

yes,

1:16:19

the movie doesn't spell that

1:16:21

out. I think part of it is

1:16:24

the geography, the layout of

1:16:26

the lodge itself, I think poses some real

1:16:28

problems that man doesn't overcome, which is that it's

1:16:30

a sprawling resort lodge in

1:16:33

the woods. It has

1:16:35

three faces that are big

1:16:38

enough to be the main facade of a normal

1:16:40

building.

1:16:41

And on the one hand, it makes

1:16:43

it a bit more dramatic in that it feels like

1:16:46

what the FBI has wandered into here is

1:16:48

an assault on a fortress.

1:16:50

Because as they

1:16:53

are approaching this place,

1:16:56

they're getting fired at from seemingly every angle

1:16:59

as the gangsters inside

1:17:02

return fire. But it does mean

1:17:04

that when it is time for instance,

1:17:08

for

1:17:09

again, like everyone gets away, at least initially,

1:17:13

you don't have a strong sense of where the cordon is.

1:17:15

You know what I mean? You just don't have a great sense of like, how are they

1:17:17

getting out? And why aren't they getting out together?

1:17:20

Like how are

1:17:21

Nelson and Dillinger

1:17:23

separated in all

1:17:25

of this? Yeah, and like there's the part where

1:17:27

at one point, I think it actually is

1:17:29

Dillinger gets out.

1:17:31

And then you see them calling

1:17:33

to each other as like someone just got out, someone just

1:17:36

got out. And it's like, who is it? I think it's Dillinger,

1:17:38

but

1:17:39

it is Dillinger. But in the scene

1:17:42

when you were watching it happen, it

1:17:44

doesn't read like that's Dillinger. It

1:17:48

just feels confusing. Cause I felt like I lost

1:17:51

track of where these characters were and

1:17:53

who escaped with whom, because Jason

1:17:55

Clark's character is also there at one

1:17:57

point. And I never, I don't remember seeing.

1:18:00

him actually leave the lodge at any point.

1:18:02

And this feels like it's mostly a failure

1:18:05

of editing. Like I you don't have to

1:18:07

show every single thing to get

1:18:09

from beat to beat to beat. But because

1:18:11

of the way this is put together, it

1:18:14

feels like they're just dropping you into

1:18:16

different areas where some guys

1:18:18

got away, but you're not really sure how

1:18:20

or who's shooting who or how this cop

1:18:23

got to this place.

1:18:24

And who chased after who. But I

1:18:26

think but for me, I think part of it is like

1:18:30

what works for me a bit in all

1:18:32

of this is I think

1:18:33

in some ways like so

1:18:37

the heat gun battle portrays chaos really,

1:18:39

really well.

1:18:41

But also I think one of the reasons it's such a

1:18:43

cool scene is that like it's

1:18:45

so well choreographed. You got Val Kilmer

1:18:47

looking like a fucking God with that M16

1:18:49

just like blazing away. And like

1:18:53

there's a reason we see that and we're like, that'd

1:18:55

be fun to do in a video game. And

1:18:58

like I

1:18:59

think one thing that kind of works for me here

1:19:01

is that everybody is out of their depth from

1:19:03

the shooting starts. Like nobody can see

1:19:05

anything. Nobody knows what's happening. And

1:19:07

kind of in some ways,

1:19:09

neither do we, which does pose problems

1:19:11

for some of this like continuity and

1:19:13

understanding you're talking about. But I

1:19:15

think what it also draws

1:19:18

out a little bit is that once

1:19:20

again, like we are not in a realm of like supermen.

1:19:23

We are not in a realm of like anyone

1:19:26

is some sort of like genius mastermind

1:19:28

in this. It is people running

1:19:31

around heavily armed with like really

1:19:33

shaky grasp on what is happening. And

1:19:36

I think it extends to like,

1:19:39

you know, the you

1:19:42

know, man's always got terrific

1:19:44

soundscapes here. I think one thing that is

1:19:46

really striking is he is playing around

1:19:49

a lot in the sequence with just

1:19:51

the way gunshots gunshots sound

1:19:53

different from a distance. There's places

1:19:55

that it sounds like there's a different gun battle happening

1:19:58

somewhere yonder.

1:19:59

as like one side of

1:20:02

it waxes and wanes. And

1:20:05

it just, it gives this overall

1:20:08

sense of,

1:20:11

in a lot of movies, these sequences happen

1:20:13

and in some ways they're a little bit empowering, right? Cause you can imagine

1:20:15

yourself as like,

1:20:17

you know, I'm here with alongside Val Kilmer's,

1:20:19

he's just rocking the whole LAPD.

1:20:22

And here,

1:20:24

what we kind of get is a bunch of people

1:20:26

deeply confused about what is happening.

1:20:29

From beginning to end, in

1:20:31

a way that I think

1:20:34

is a bit, is

1:20:36

a bit like subversive of genre,

1:20:38

I think. And whether that lands for you or

1:20:41

not,

1:20:42

I, this is like what

1:20:44

I'm sort of taking away from it, certainly,

1:20:46

is that like, this is the anti-heat.

1:20:49

And in this sequence, I started

1:20:51

to like really feel that like, men and

1:20:53

Sponati are doing this intentionally.

1:20:56

Yeah, I don't, I

1:20:58

do think the confusion is intentional,

1:21:01

but I just don't think they execute it well. Like,

1:21:03

I think there is a way to do that

1:21:05

confusion that makes, doesn't keep the audience

1:21:07

feeling like they have

1:21:10

no sense of what is

1:21:12

actually taking place. Because it's not just

1:21:14

that like, it's a frantic

1:21:16

gun battle and these guys are overmatched and

1:21:19

they don't really know what they're doing. It's

1:21:21

that like, from a very basic visibility,

1:21:24

legibility, editing, sound

1:21:26

mixing, everything perspective, it's

1:21:29

all just very muddled

1:21:30

in a way that's not

1:21:31

interesting. Like, I don't think it's actually,

1:21:34

even if you take the excitement element out of it, I

1:21:37

don't think they're making an interesting statement

1:21:39

on what this shootout was by

1:21:42

doing it this way.

1:21:43

I think in the end, what they are actually

1:21:45

doing is kind of kneecapping themselves

1:21:48

and creating a scene that

1:21:50

should be like a big, if

1:21:52

not the climax, but a big climactic point

1:21:54

for your story

1:21:56

that feels like it is just

1:21:58

muddling along.

1:21:59

until it's over and that

1:22:02

is not what this scene should be.

1:22:05

No, and so

1:22:08

the scene unfolds with Dillinger

1:22:11

and Jason Clark's character sort of making an escape

1:22:13

and Jason Clark gets hit. And,

1:22:16

you know, later, you know,

1:22:18

dies as Dillinger is trying to save him. And he

1:22:21

comes as close again. Like it's a good scene.

1:22:24

I'm not sure it's Clark is good. I will

1:22:26

say the character is nothing. They

1:22:28

give him no traits. They give him no personality.

1:22:31

But Clark is captivating enough of as an

1:22:34

actor that like, I kind of

1:22:36

bought the moments between him and Dillinger

1:22:38

where they're having their kind of last conversation.

1:22:41

Did you ever see a Scrybo code?

1:22:44

No. Like

1:22:46

very short lived like this is probably like as close

1:22:49

as he comes to like having a

1:22:51

true star turn. But

1:22:54

it is.

1:22:57

Let's see here. That was

1:22:59

him, right?

1:23:05

Yeah. So, yeah, this is a short

1:23:07

lived 2011 series where

1:23:11

he is sort of the

1:23:13

rogue cop at the center of

1:23:16

this. But it ends up it's like

1:23:18

it was a network TV series, but one of the more interesting

1:23:20

ones where it has this like odd

1:23:23

sociological bent to it. And

1:23:26

like he does a very good job as

1:23:28

sort of an old school cop who

1:23:31

is sort of reckoning with the

1:23:33

various ways that like the world is changing

1:23:36

around him. And like it should be it should be

1:23:38

a really like.

1:23:40

Boiler plate role that

1:23:42

he ends up making into, you know, I'm

1:23:44

not saying he's Dennis Franz playing Andy

1:23:46

Sipkowitz, but right. If that

1:23:48

series had gone on, maybe he would have been

1:23:50

in terms of opening theme performed

1:23:53

by Billy Corrigan. Interesting.

1:23:55

Well.

1:23:58

Can't all be winners. No, I suppose.

1:23:59

It's very Chicago though. It is. So,

1:24:03

but yeah, like he's always terrific.

1:24:05

And he's so that, you know, before the gun

1:24:07

battle, he's talking about his fate,

1:24:10

his premonition that, you know, he's doomed,

1:24:12

you know, when your number is up. And

1:24:14

then at the end, he

1:24:17

tries to give us the film's thesis on

1:24:19

Dillinger,

1:24:20

which is that you don't let people go. You don't let people down.

1:24:23

And that's beautiful. I think

1:24:25

that is like, that is a really compelling idea for

1:24:27

like what animates Dillinger is this need

1:24:29

to like be the guy for everybody in his

1:24:31

life. But

1:24:34

depth performance is so closed off.

1:24:37

Yeah. That you don't get that sense that

1:24:39

like, yes, he's loyal

1:24:42

up to a point, but you don't get the sense that like

1:24:45

what animates him is this devotion to people.

1:24:47

No,

1:24:48

that's the thing is that like they're doing

1:24:50

a lot of telling and they're never showing. And

1:24:54

like there are obviously people who trust him and

1:24:56

follow him and care about him to some degree,

1:24:59

but nothing in depth performance

1:25:03

illustrates that.

1:25:05

Like the other than like a vague

1:25:07

sadness when people around him start

1:25:09

dying or leaving or abandoning him

1:25:11

or what have you,

1:25:13

there just isn't any real connection

1:25:15

there

1:25:16

that illustrates that like there's

1:25:19

a reason why these people follow him

1:25:22

into, you know, hails of gunfire in any

1:25:24

manner of danger that he sees fit to bring them

1:25:26

to.

1:25:27

Even when they're doing the bank robberies,

1:25:30

which are, you know, I think are

1:25:33

intended to show you like, look

1:25:35

how good these guys are, look how efficient they

1:25:37

are, look how bought into this gang

1:25:39

and these activities that they are,

1:25:42

they're all kind of the same. Like

1:25:44

they just do that scene over and

1:25:46

over again in a way that feels very much

1:25:48

the same until the last one with Nelson where

1:25:51

he just starts shooting everybody. Like

1:25:53

it feels like, no, they're just, yeah, okay.

1:25:56

They're kind of good bank robbers. Like it

1:25:58

doesn't have that ruthless efficiency.

1:25:59

that like heat illustrated, it

1:26:02

doesn't have that flavor of like,

1:26:04

these are, you know, like old

1:26:07

school outlaws just doing old school outlaw

1:26:09

shit the way Jesse James did in the early goings.

1:26:12

And it doesn't make it seem like anything

1:26:15

these guys are doing has

1:26:17

any real appeal to them other than

1:26:20

it gets them money. And I just don't

1:26:22

think that's a compelling pitch for a story about bank

1:26:24

robbers.

1:26:25

No. And

1:26:28

just to close out this gun battle,

1:26:30

I do love the shot at the end when they finally bring

1:26:33

Nelson to heel when

1:26:35

they finally corner him. God, they shoot

1:26:37

him so many times.

1:26:39

Yeah, they turn him into like ground beef as

1:26:42

he goes down swinging. But the thing I love

1:26:44

is like,

1:26:45

we get this one shot again like a Spenadian

1:26:47

man, like some things really

1:26:50

land

1:26:51

as he is finally like knocked down

1:26:54

and lays there sort of spread eagle with his Thompson

1:26:57

smoking next to him. We see his last breath

1:26:59

and it's the like, the light catches it with

1:27:01

the same way the smoke is coming off the gun. And

1:27:05

it is sort of this like thematic, like,

1:27:07

you know,

1:27:09

connection being drawn between like, you

1:27:11

know, the violence with which he lives is

1:27:13

also his animating spirit and-

1:27:15

And also the last gasp of a kind of criminal

1:27:18

type thing. Yes, absolutely. It's

1:27:20

a beautiful shot. It's a cool

1:27:22

moment. It's one of exactly three shots

1:27:25

in this movie that I still remember even in

1:27:27

between the viewings I've had. Like

1:27:29

that is one of the only things about this movie that

1:27:31

has stuck with me.

1:27:33

But,

1:27:36

and this is part of the oddity of this.

1:27:39

So, and I

1:27:41

think it's after this that we get the

1:27:43

take the white gloves off, right? This is where

1:27:46

Hoover's like, it's time to like really lean into

1:27:48

the full Fashisti like

1:27:51

shit that has clearly inspired

1:27:53

him.

1:27:56

But as

1:27:58

that manhunt intensifies and takes that- that turn,

1:28:02

the film is now done with bail. It's

1:28:05

done with pervas. And it's given up on him

1:28:07

entirely.

1:28:09

And the other thing is, in

1:28:11

its last act,

1:28:14

Depp finds a different take on Dillinger.

1:28:17

And I

1:28:20

don't necessarily think it's ill-advised,

1:28:23

but it does feel like it felt

1:28:25

to me at the time a bit less so now,

1:28:28

like at a certain point,

1:28:30

Johnny Depp starts turning in Johnny Depp performance.

1:28:33

And what I mean is like

1:28:35

the bad kind, right? Where it's like,

1:28:37

hey, look, I'm Johnny Depp.

1:28:40

And part of it is when he goes incognito

1:28:43

and is like sort of cornered

1:28:45

in Chicago, he tries to rescue Billy,

1:28:47

that fails.

1:28:49

His gang is being run

1:28:51

down by pervices

1:28:52

unit, torturing

1:28:56

the way through. They've sort

1:28:58

of laid all sorts of traps for him.

1:29:03

We see that his former Confederates are

1:29:05

now being turned against

1:29:07

him by the FBI. The people that we

1:29:09

saw aiding him early in the film are now

1:29:11

basically informants against him and

1:29:13

are setting him up for the kill.

1:29:16

And in all of this,

1:29:17

Dillinger switches to a more

1:29:20

festive, like tropical shirt

1:29:22

and a cream-colored,

1:29:25

like pork pie hat or something,

1:29:27

and

1:29:29

gets a little like

1:29:30

reedy mustache.

1:29:34

And starts to feel like a different

1:29:36

character. And in some ways

1:29:39

starts to feel like,

1:29:41

and this is the film is drawing this out,

1:29:43

that he begins to see himself

1:29:47

as the mythic star figure

1:29:49

that the media has made him

1:29:51

out to be,

1:29:52

but also it

1:29:55

feels like, I don't know,

1:29:57

that... Depp

1:30:00

is now, you know what,

1:30:02

there's a thing Depp did in a lot of his movies, especially

1:30:05

associated with his Tim Burton

1:30:08

collaborations, but there's a lot of him

1:30:12

looking wide-eyed and innocent and

1:30:14

astonished are things in the film, right? This

1:30:16

is the thing that Burton identified

1:30:19

early with him, is that

1:30:22

there can be an innocence and vulnerability

1:30:25

with just the way he looks, and you

1:30:27

can create a lot of moments by scoring

1:30:30

beautifully

1:30:31

him looking at things and

1:30:34

experiencing feelings.

1:30:37

And it feels like that depth

1:30:39

performance comes out of nowhere here and

1:30:41

shows up in the last act. Yeah, it

1:30:43

feels, I'm with you, it does

1:30:46

feel like he's starting to get more showy, but not

1:30:48

in a way that

1:30:50

really benefits the character or the story

1:30:52

at all.

1:30:53

And I think- Not to keep it like, not to keep it

1:30:55

back to the sad face of Jesse James,

1:30:59

but Pitt does this work, Pitt does it in

1:31:01

that, like

1:31:02

the end of that film even,

1:31:04

is sort of Pitt

1:31:06

like contemplating like

1:31:08

literally his own reflection and

1:31:10

like his legend.

1:31:12

And Depp

1:31:15

is doing it, but it doesn't work for some

1:31:17

reason.

1:31:18

Well, I mean, look, and part of the Jesse

1:31:20

James thing is that his character

1:31:23

doesn't really embrace the folk hero

1:31:26

aspect. If anything, he just becomes more of a

1:31:28

paranoid weirdo as time goes on.

1:31:30

Oh, he's incredibly scary. But

1:31:32

that's the thing, he gets scarier. And like

1:31:35

there is a dimension there that I feel like

1:31:37

once that gear gets kicked in,

1:31:40

like it's such a

1:31:42

different approach that actually

1:31:44

tells a story. And

1:31:48

this isn't aiding the storytelling,

1:31:51

this isn't emphasizing an aspect of the

1:31:53

character that like maybe the audience

1:31:55

didn't really fully understand at this point. It

1:31:58

just feels like

1:32:00

The screenplay called for a different gear

1:32:03

and Depp didn't have

1:32:05

one. So he just fell

1:32:07

back on the kind of thing that he tends

1:32:09

to do when he's just falling

1:32:11

back on his usual charm.

1:32:15

Yeah, and so we get the scene of him.

1:32:18

You know, he's already a marked man

1:32:20

and he goes into the Chicago

1:32:22

Dillinger unit, the Chicago police's Dillinger unit.

1:32:26

You know, just dying of curiosity for

1:32:28

what they make of him. And it is an effective

1:32:30

moment where we see all

1:32:33

his gang members, including ones that we haven't liked,

1:32:36

that they went their separate ways and have sort of split up. Everybody

1:32:39

he's worked with is dead or in custody. Mostly they're dead. And

1:32:42

he is sort of the last

1:32:44

photo on the wall, still at large. And

1:32:48

it is, you

1:32:51

know, it like the

1:32:54

concept of it kind of works where Dillinger

1:32:59

has not he's been so busy living

1:33:01

this life that he hasn't really fully

1:33:04

internalized how that life has

1:33:06

been portrayed like the fact that he's become

1:33:08

a national character.

1:33:10

And this part of the scene kind of works

1:33:12

for me in that

1:33:15

there is a kind of wondrousness

1:33:17

to it. Like as he

1:33:20

as he realizes, like,

1:33:22

this is how large he looms. This is this

1:33:25

is who he's, you know, been been

1:33:27

made out to be.

1:33:29

And that energy is carried into

1:33:32

his final night where

1:33:34

he watches Manhattan Melodrama.

1:33:36

A not

1:33:39

forgotten, but I don't mean it's a particularly

1:33:41

like revered like

1:33:44

melodrama from the 30s. They say it right in

1:33:46

the title. Yeah. But

1:33:49

I do have a soft spot for anything with William Powell in it. But,

1:33:52

you know, it is

1:33:54

in that film where, you know, that that

1:33:56

is a film about,

1:33:59

you know, Clark.

1:33:59

Clark Gable and William Powell being best

1:34:02

friends, William Powell becomes the governor of New York

1:34:04

as there's, you know, Mr. Respectability. And

1:34:06

Clark Gable is his down and dirty

1:34:08

gangster buddy who gets in hot water

1:34:10

and, you know, ends up being like,

1:34:13

you know, given the chair at the end of the film. And,

1:34:16

you know, the conflict

1:34:18

there is, will William Powell commute

1:34:20

a sentence or not? And that, you know, the

1:34:22

scene we see is Clark

1:34:24

Gable saying,

1:34:26

I don't want to, I don't like, I

1:34:28

don't want to be spared. I don't want to live in prison. You

1:34:31

know, I just want to, I just want to go all at once.

1:34:34

And the

1:34:36

fact that like,

1:34:40

in some ways it is in the process of

1:34:42

watching the Hollywood gangster, the

1:34:44

Dillinger finds out who he is.

1:34:47

Or at least who he wants to be.

1:34:49

That concept kind

1:34:51

of works for me. But

1:34:54

again, everything in this final act

1:34:57

feels

1:34:58

a bit divorced from the

1:35:01

closed off

1:35:02

cold character that we've seen for

1:35:04

so much of the film.

1:35:05

Yeah, like it is a resonant

1:35:08

moment. And it is a thing that I think

1:35:10

a better movie, like if you

1:35:12

were to hang your hat on that scene in that

1:35:14

moment with that character,

1:35:16

I think it would hit real hard.

1:35:19

But

1:35:20

a lot of these, I would say the last

1:35:22

30-ish minutes of this movie

1:35:25

has a real animatronic quality

1:35:27

to it. In that it feels like every actor,

1:35:30

every character is just going

1:35:32

through the motions of an expected result.

1:35:35

You know, like we know how

1:35:38

Dillinger met his end. We know the theater,

1:35:40

we know the story, you know, the

1:35:42

him trying to pull the gun, not successfully doing

1:35:44

it, getting gunned down in the

1:35:47

process.

1:35:48

But

1:35:50

there's no energy to it. There

1:35:53

is no emotional content

1:35:55

to it when it all starts to play out. The

1:35:58

theater thing feels like it drags on. way

1:36:00

longer than the actual point

1:36:02

it's making deserves.

1:36:05

And when you finally get to these last like close

1:36:07

up shots of Depp's face as they're getting

1:36:09

ready to, you know, to take him out.

1:36:13

It's they're going for something that feels

1:36:15

like I assume is supposed to have like almost dreamlike

1:36:17

quality to it. But instead, it's very rigid,

1:36:20

like it feels like everything is just so choreographed

1:36:23

to the hilt.

1:36:24

And none of it feels like humans behaving

1:36:27

like humans do. It's just actors

1:36:29

doing extremely rigid direction.

1:36:33

Yeah, it's very weird. He backs off sort of the

1:36:35

torture in chief, which is a with

1:36:38

just a glare before he sees the

1:36:40

other cops coming. But then, you know,

1:36:42

they

1:36:44

he is going for gun. It's not quite an execution,

1:36:46

but it's an execution. Yeah, you

1:36:48

know, it's like this guy's not this guy's not being

1:36:50

brought in. And we get our

1:36:53

we get a closing shot of

1:36:57

how quickly he

1:37:00

goes from, you know, in some ways, we've

1:37:02

seen him portrayed as a folk hero one minute. And

1:37:05

now he's a ghoulish spectacle. Right,

1:37:07

right. And this is a thing that, you

1:37:10

know, that

1:37:11

the film does a couple times once when his prison

1:37:13

plane is landing. And again, here,

1:37:15

the film really becomes interested

1:37:18

in the process of like documenting moments

1:37:20

like this, of how these moments play

1:37:22

out under these harsh glare, like lurid

1:37:25

lighting and the old time,

1:37:27

old school flash bulbs and such, and

1:37:29

just the press of crowds, crowds coming

1:37:31

to gawk at, you know, this

1:37:33

guy. And it's

1:37:36

Stephen Lang who sort of delivers the the killing

1:37:38

blow. And we see,

1:37:41

you know, Dillinger

1:37:43

trying to speak as Lang,

1:37:46

you

1:37:46

know, plays his head next to his mouth. But

1:37:48

when

1:37:50

when Bail's pervus

1:37:53

asks, what did he say? Lang says nothing.

1:37:56

Couldn't hear it.

1:37:58

Yeah. And in some ways, like this is

1:37:59

Because the, you know, again, the film hasn't

1:38:02

fully explored this, but this is kind of the real root of

1:38:04

the the breach between them, right? That like,

1:38:07

you know, Stephen Lang's character feels more kinship

1:38:10

and like humanity toward

1:38:13

Dillinger than he does at Purvis at this point

1:38:15

that like they are not partners in that way. Yeah.

1:38:18

And he is the one who bears the news to Billy

1:38:21

and

1:38:23

like gives the film this like little touch of humanity

1:38:25

at the end where he is trying

1:38:27

to bring some measure of comfort into

1:38:30

the scene and try to do something

1:38:32

for Dillinger

1:38:34

as a person at the end. It's

1:38:38

a nice scene. It's

1:38:40

it's it's carried off well, but. But

1:38:44

it didn't earn it.

1:38:45

It's disjointed. Yeah, it doesn't earn it

1:38:47

because again, I if if that is

1:38:49

the angle they wanted to take with it, which is

1:38:51

that the Texas law men feel

1:38:54

a greater kinship with these, you know, these

1:38:56

these rough and ready criminals than the the

1:38:58

stuffed shirt fucking, you know, cops

1:39:00

that they have to work for. They

1:39:03

did not do the legwork to set

1:39:05

this up and present it in a way

1:39:07

that feels like it is actually the movie's thesis

1:39:09

statement. Or why it is so resonant that

1:39:12

he would come bearing this news to Billy because we bought

1:39:14

it if we are not bought in sufficiently

1:39:16

on Billy.

1:39:17

Yeah, exactly. Like all these things

1:39:19

again, there are individual scenes or individual

1:39:22

aspects, lines, things that people

1:39:24

do in these movies or in this movie that

1:39:27

feel like in a much

1:39:29

better production would absolutely

1:39:31

kill like this would be great

1:39:34

drama in the in the vein of

1:39:36

great Michael Mann work.

1:39:38

And

1:39:39

it is the failure of the film. I think

1:39:41

that like those scenes feel like they are on

1:39:44

islands unto themselves. They are

1:39:46

to make it twice.

1:39:47

No.

1:39:48

No. If

1:39:52

he could have gotten the heat, if he could have gotten a TV

1:39:54

movie version of this and then his real version. Maybe,

1:39:57

but I think the bigger problem here and

1:39:59

this is illustrated.

1:39:59

I

1:40:01

think we started to see this in Miami

1:40:03

Vice. Though I think Miami

1:40:05

Vice, you know, problems aside,

1:40:08

there is an energy to that film. There

1:40:10

is a fire to it that I

1:40:12

think lets you skim over the

1:40:14

more harried and

1:40:17

less put together parts of it. And

1:40:20

I can understand how there would be a

1:40:22

critical reappraisal of it, even if I'm not fully

1:40:24

on board with it. This

1:40:27

does not have any of that

1:40:29

energy, none of that fire.

1:40:31

And,

1:40:32

you know, while Miami Vice was almost was

1:40:35

absolutely Michael Mann covering himself,

1:40:38

you know, a previous songs that he had already

1:40:40

written.

1:40:41

He at least took an angle there that felt like, okay,

1:40:44

I'm trying to modernize this. I'm trying to do something

1:40:46

with this that isn't just a straight-up

1:40:49

retelling of this incredibly successful franchise

1:40:51

that I created.

1:40:53

This just feels like he

1:40:56

wanted to try to find a way to make heat in a

1:40:58

different era with real people. Like

1:41:00

he was trying to take a real-world story that he felt

1:41:02

like had some analogues to

1:41:04

the kind of crime story he is already told

1:41:07

and then tried to jam it into the like

1:41:10

that meat into the skeletal structure of

1:41:12

something he already knew how to make. And

1:41:16

I think that is a huge failing

1:41:19

of this film. I think this needed to be

1:41:21

its own story. It needed to be

1:41:23

something that did not

1:41:25

echo

1:41:26

better movies that he had already made. He

1:41:29

needed to strive for something that was beyond what

1:41:31

he had already done before

1:41:33

and

1:41:34

none of this is that.

1:41:36

Other than like, you know, his further delving

1:41:39

into the world of digital photography,

1:41:41

there is nothing meaningful or

1:41:43

inventive or even really that

1:41:46

thoughtful in this movie.

1:41:49

Instead, it's just rehashing shit

1:41:51

you've already seen him do in a worse

1:41:53

way

1:41:54

with actors that seem way less invested in

1:41:56

it and taking a real-world story and...

1:41:59

weirdly sucking the drama

1:42:01

out of what feels like should have been a slam

1:42:04

dunk kind of retelling.

1:42:09

Yeah, I um,

1:42:12

like where I have come

1:42:14

down with it is like

1:42:16

I'm considerably warmer on the film. I think

1:42:18

a lot of these scenes end up working

1:42:21

well for me. I like the the

1:42:23

coldness of a lot of a lot

1:42:25

of these scenes, but

1:42:27

like I do, like

1:42:30

I do agree with a lot of the criticism,

1:42:33

like I

1:42:35

guess for me, where I come down is like this

1:42:37

and it's just sort of a more charitable,

1:42:39

uh, like appraisal in yours, but

1:42:44

in all these disjointed pieces, I see a lot of

1:42:46

pieces of stuff I like. I see a lot

1:42:48

of like themes that he's playing around with that,

1:42:51

uh, like I really connect with and

1:42:53

I think are like coming up to

1:42:56

some important points,

1:42:59

but I wish

1:43:01

it had picked, got

1:43:05

of the like half dozen interesting ideas

1:43:07

in this film, I wish he'd picked two to be like

1:43:09

the main focus and hone in on those.

1:43:12

And I think in some ways maybe it's like the, you

1:43:15

know, in some ways it's like the danger what he ran into with Ali,

1:43:18

where he gets like, I thought

1:43:21

about Ali a lot during research. He's

1:43:23

like, I want to capture an entire era

1:43:26

and talk about everything that's happening in all the

1:43:28

context and connect to all this. Like, is it really

1:43:30

like you can see it's like a pitch.

1:43:33

It's like a elevate. It's like the pitch meeting gets out of

1:43:35

hand. Yeah. And that makes

1:43:37

its way onto the film where it's like,

1:43:40

you can see how you would get

1:43:42

like with Ali, you'd start by saying like, well, actually

1:43:44

he's the central figure. Like he's this hinge point,

1:43:46

everything touch it. Like everything in the sixties and

1:43:49

seventies like touches Ali. He's like in

1:43:52

the background or the foreground of everything

1:43:54

important that's happening. And so we're going to, we're going to like make

1:43:56

a movie about that. But

1:43:59

in the end,

1:43:59

starts to feel like a really high-brow Forrest Gump

1:44:02

in some ways, like doing it that way.

1:44:04

And some of these things are not fully earned.

1:44:07

Like, there's the CIA at the

1:44:09

rumble in the jungle. What are they up to? Doing

1:44:11

bad cold war shit. And I think here,

1:44:14

I

1:44:16

do think he's on the right track

1:44:18

for a lot of things.

1:44:20

The fact that

1:44:23

from the beginning, like