Michael Mann

Mann skips off convention like a stone on a river...impassively observing his Hitchcockian hero: dragged into action and struggling to save the day from a sympathetic devil.

A painfully protracted muddle of dull deals and somnambulent standoffs.

True-crime story or romantic myth-making? This was the question I brought in to Michael Mann's Public Enemies...and, though seemingly an either-or proposition, the question still on my mind when I walked out.

A stealth epic, framing an urban jungle and making its own kind of contemporary history by pairing acting giants Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in what has arguably become the preeminent cops-and-robbers movie.