Blog | FunStylers

Producer: Vidhu Vinod Chopra
Director: Rajkumar Hirani
Starring: Aamir Khan, Kareena Kapoor, R Madhavan, Sharman Joshi, Boman Irani, Mona Singh, Parikshit Sahani, Javed Jaffrey
Music: Shantanu Moitra
Lyrics: Swanand Kirkire
Genre: Comedy
Film Released on: 25 December 2009

“3 Idiots (3I)” is a story about friendship, about friends, and what they mean to us. In that, it is similar to “Dil Chahta Hai (DCH)”. But that’s where the similarity ends. Because while “DCH” was a much loved, and delicately nuanced child of its debuting director Farhan Akhtar, “3I” is a boisterous romp through the travails of life and love and camaraderie, from a director not known for his subtlety. Thus “3I” ends up being a wannabe soulful film, with the heart of Munnabhai (gold) and the spark of Aamir (old but not jaded).
The film starts off with two idiots, Farhan Qureshi (Madhavan) and Raju Rastogi (Sharman Joshi) setting out in search of the third, Ranchhoddas Shamaldas Chanchad (Aamir Khan). As they travel, the film veers backwards and forwards into flashbacks, and we become privy to the three’s friendship in Engineering College. Of the three only Rancho wants to study to learn, Farhan yearns to be a photographer, and Raju is burdened by the fear of not meeting parental expectations. To make college life more interesting, we also have the quirky Institute Director, Professor Viru Sahastrabuddhe (Boman Irani), and his lovely daughter Pia (Kareena Kapoor). All good things however come to an end, and the friends must separate. Will they ever all be together again?

Aamir plays a college kid here, and while he’s actually 40 plus, he does manage his character quite well. As Rancho he is an avid learner, with a rambunctious air and a straightforward manner of speaking. Madhavan and Sharman also do well as his devoted side-kicks. Kareena is fabulous as bespectacled Pia, and Boman is quite the eccentric professor. The direction is adequate, the dialogues apt, and the music hummable. This is also quite a unique story, and it is told pretty well, with the flashbacks well-woven with real-time.

However, “3I” can never actually make up its mind about what it’s trying to be. A comedy with “intelligent” leanings or a thoughtful, coming-of-age film with lapses of reality? This film has both elements; it tries to weave a realistic story, but the story has some unbelievable events which take away from the film. Each film is different because of its director, and while Hirani is a talented director, and his films generally clean and classy, they tend to be a little short on character development, and concentrate more on eliciting the guffaws. This movie is no different; thus while it had the potential to be another “DCH”, it doesn’t quite get there.

The characters in “3I” are an interesting and varied bunch. Rancho is the one around whom the story turns, and his friends are no less. It is a pity then that these characters aren’t fleshed out very well. “3I” turns out to have way more story than buildup; it seems that we are thrown into the tumult of events, without being privy to important background information, which lessens the impact of the emotions being shown. Seemingly moving portrayals like that of Raju’s poverty stricken family are reduced to caricatures. So when the director decides to milk the emotions that he chooses to, one is left a little underwhelmed and undecided as to whether these are “real” emotions or just other attempts at “comedy”. This imbalance, some emotions underdone, and some just so pat that you doubt their genuineness, are the film’s undoing.

This still is an entertaining film, pulling its weight because of its cast, its humor, its good-heartedness and its feel-good bonhomie. Aamir’s star-power, Kareena’s geeky-girl oomph also work in its favor. All that said, I will also say that “3I” didn’t live up to my expectations, but if you are looking for nothing more than a light Friday night entertainer, this is well worth the money.

(“3I” is a fairly clean film kidwise, but does show lots of men in their underwear. It also has a lip-lock and some diagrammatic depictions of child-birth – nothing queasy (except maybe the use of the suction?), but if you have curious children, they’ll probably have questions, so be warned).
Reviewed by: Amodini Sharma

Producer: Aditya Chopra
Director: Shimit Amin
Starring: Ranbir Kapoor, Shazahn Padamsee, Sharon Prabhakar, Prem Chopra, Mukesh Bhatt, D. Santosh, Gauahar Khan, Naveen Kaushik and Manish Choudhari
Music: Salim Merchant, Sulaiman Merchant
Lyrics: Jaideep Sahni
Genre: Comedy
Recommended Audience: Parental Guidance
Film Released on: 11 December 2009

In the dog-eats-dog world of marketing and sales, Harpreet Singh Bedi (Ranbir Kapoor) is an oddity - an honest man. Director Shimit Amin and Jaideep Sahni, who also collaborated on Chak De! India for Yash Raj Productions, have found inspiration in everyday life in this modest film which contrasts hierarchical, competitive business arrangements with the more transparent and ethical practices of a true partnership. The themes of Rocket Singh may well resonate with Indian graduates who are trying to find their feet in a ruthless, self serving business world. Although well intentioned, it did not provide me with the entertainment quotient that I expect from a Bollywood film. Chances are that if you too are into fantasy, romance, music, dance and big emotions, you may find this film lacking. I watch Bollywood films to get away from the nasty reality of office politics, not to be immersed in it.
Like Chak De! India, Rocket Singh is about the underdog - the loser who challenges his lot. Harpreet just scrapes a pass to graduate from university and so feels privileged to score a sales job with a computer firm. He soon realizes that in business, corrupt practices are usual and honesty is not only unrewarded but also punished. Singh is alienated from co-workers and chastised by management for taking a moral stand. His small office cubicle is bombarded with paper planes thrown by fellow workers forced to work harder to cover his “act of conscience”. The symbol of the ‘paper plane’ or ‘rocket’ - initially highlighting his oppression also comes to symbolize his salvation as Singh decides to fight back with a business venture of his own - Chak De! Singh.

A point of interest is this film is the portrayal of the Sikh as hero - not as a curiosity or a character used to establish local color. Unfortunately the ‘feel good’ factor in a movie only seems to work if the audience empathizes with the plight of the main character. All I perceived in Rocket Singh was a young man’s unhappiness with regards to his work place - a common enough occurrence which is usually remedied by changing jobs. (Although granted, this may be a lot harder to do in India.) In Chak De! India, coach Kabir Khan was dishonored on a national platform in a career altering, shameful way. His hurt was palpable and his struggle to overcome adversity was clearly defined. There is no real sense of struggle in Rocket Singh - no tension to make success the sweeter. Harpreet’s vow to get even translates too conveniently into possibilities.

Jaideep Sahni’s previous screenplays seem to evolve in similar ways. Disenfranchised individuals bond and become a force to be reckoned with. Together Bunty and Babli defied the law. Dia and her theatre group (Aaja Nachle) defied business interests. Kabir Khan and the girl team (Chak De! India) defied society’s view of women in sport. These films are also characterized by an episodic, languid style which often makes use of multiple sub-stories related to supporting characters.

In Rocket Singh, information related to the members of Harpreet’s small company, was only sketched out. They were defined by their office behavior and a few quirks but nothing that had me rooting for them - hoping that they would give management the slap in the face it deserved.

Harpreet’s girlfriend played by newcomer Shazahn Padamsee was just a shadow and not in any way essential to the story. The other female character - Koena - the receptionist (Gauhar Khan) comes across as yet another lightweight Yash Raj nod to women’s rights. Koena has great business acumen but the Managing Director does not promote her to an administrative position, preferring a male to do the job. Some Yash Raj films such as Chak De! India and even Dil Bole Hadippa! (to a lesser extent) engage more authentically with women’s issues; others like Bachna Ae Haseeno and Rocket Singh succumb to placard waving without substance; the branding of new works with a kind of empty mission statement. The three supporting male characters and Singh’s co-conspirators are a little more interesting. They are Nitin - the sleazy but savvy assistant manager, Mr. Mishra - the down-trodden tea-man and Giri - a sex-obsessed fellow worker.

Although Ranbir Kapoor is being feted as the new contender for the Bollywood throne, I don’t believe we have yet seen a career defining performance from him. In this film he is again portraying the role of someone who is boyish and rather naïve - (Saawariya, Wake Up Sid, Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani). A configuration of fresh screenplays that connect with the social pulse, coupled with repeated stellar performances can earn an actor his place in a list of luminaries. However, Kapoor has not yet rocketed to that lofty abode.
Reviewed by: Lidia Ostepeev

Ishqiya is a story about love arising in characters, portrayed uniquely according to their own personal traits. The situations in the plot lead the characters to experience the emotion creeping into their lives in the most unexpected manner. It is a story about three romantic personalities played by Arshad Warshi, Vidya Balan and Naseeruddin Shah. Vidya Balan plays a scheming woman, two-timing the uncle and nephew played by Naseer and Arshad…take a look!

If you’re like many parents, you’ve watched your children devour the Harry Potter book series for years. It’s one of the most widely read series for kids.
And maybe you, like your children, have eagerly anticipated each book and movie release, reading these “kid’s books” just as feverishly as your children.
The series has become iconic among Generation Harry, the youths who started reading the books in the beginning and who grew up with Harry.

But the books are more than just fantasy wizard tales, said child psychologist Lisa Damour, author of chapters in two books about the series: “Reading Harry Potter: Critical Essays” and “Reading Harry Potter Again.”
The series is practically an encyclopedia of tweens’ and teenagers’ psychological development between ages 11 and 17.
Damour, who started reading the books because most of her adolescent clients talked about them constantly, said author J.K. Rowling did an excellent job capturing the trials and tribulations of the teenage years. “Those books really capture the challenge of normal development; just the day-to-day aspects of growing up is captured really beautifully,” Damour said.
Barbara Hague, 62, of Oklahoma City agrees. Her son and daughter-in-law urged her to read the series, and she became hooked. Hague read all seven books within a month’s time.
“All children go through those traumatic crushes, the ups and downs. Of course, not the darkness that Harry had, but all the different emotions that child has gone through — I think that’s what made that book so good is the wide range of emotions,” Hague said.
Her grandson, Parker Hague, 11, is up to the sixth book. He understands well why kids relate to the series.
“He’s a regular guy, but he’s also an awesome wizard,” Hague said.
Harry Potter represents the way many teens and preteens feel about themselves.
“Harry’s an outsider in some ways,” Damour said. “It’s clear that he doesn’t rule the school; he’s not the super-popular kid. But it turns out he’s also the most powerful, fabulous magician on the planet. He’s like the greatest hero of all time.
“Kids always want to be the special one. You want to be a celebrity. That’s how I always felt,” said Hannah Youngblood, 17, of Norman. She’s read the series multiple times.
In some ways, the Harry Potter series can be considered a self-help book for teens.
“Because it all occurs in this displaced world, this magical world that’s not so close to reality, I think it gives kids a way to sort of connect with it more because it doesn’t feel too close to home,” Damour said. “But I think it sort of shows over and over again that bumbling, not knowing what you’re doing, getting yelled at in class, thinking the adults are ridiculous — all teenagers feel this.”
Developmental stages
The series begins when Harry is 11. He is an orphan, living with a crummy set of guardians. This motif is repeated over and over in literature and fairy tales, and children this age can relate to the predicament.
“Kids feel ambivalent about their parents. They really like their parents but they also feel really annoyed by their parents. When you create two sets of parents in a story, it gives kids a way to sort of have both sets of feelings about parents — the wicked awful parent and the good parent,” Damour said.
Rowling also includes plenty of the stuff 11- and 12-year-old boys love: grossness. The first couple books have a healthy dose of guts, gross animals and other references to being dirty and gross, Damour said.
“The kind of gross poopy stuff is very exciting for 11- and 12-year-old boys,” she said.
Puberty
Rowling talks about puberty without talking about it directly, a fact that teens and preteens appreciate. She alludes to the changes teens’ bodies go through without making them feel lectured to or uncomfortable, Damour said.
“Kids don’t want adults talking about puberty. It’s not their favorite topic. It’s very unsettling to them,” she said. “And yet, in the stories, their bodies are always kind of changing.”
Rowling also shows the differences between boys and girls in romantic situations. From Harry’s first kiss to Hermione and Ron’s awkward romance, Rowling captures the mismatch between teen girls, who are more sophisticated in their romantic engagements, and teen boys, who are usually less focused on romance.
Grumpy years
As Harry starts to get older, he gets cranky. It’s typical of teenagers, Damour said, but adults often don’t tolerate it well.
“When I was reading the book, I was like, ‘If this were a real kid, we would put this kid on medications so fast,’” Damour joked. “He is so cranky through the whole thing. But the reality is he’s got good reason to be cranky, and he feels sort of out of control in some ways.”
This crankiness and anger is normal for teens, she said, because being a teen is stressful.
Robin Sell, 38, of Oklahoma City remembers her cranky years.
“I think it’s that teenage angst of the unpopular crowd,” she said. She felt that angst as a high schooler, too. “I hated high school, like Harry does.”
Damour appreciates the fact that Rowling covers that teenage angst as normal and understandable.
Moving out of self-absorption
As Harry matures toward the end of the series, at ages 16 and 17, he finally starts to realize that adults do things for their own reasons, Damour said. He comes to terms with why Professor Dumbledore didn’t give him all the information he needed and why Snape acts the way he does.
“As soon as kids start to stand back from their parents and say, ‘Oh I get it, my dad does these things because I see how he interacts with my grandpa, and I see where he comes from. And not every single thing my father does is a reflection on me or a response to me.’ As soon as kids can do that, all of a sudden you just see them become so much more mature,” Damour said.
This is the moment that kids grow up, she said. For some, it happens at the age it happened for Harry; for others, it happens earlier or later.
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A UTV Motion Pictures KAMINEY is being touted to be one of the most awaited films of the year 2009. Directed by Vishal Bharadwaj, who gave films like MAQBOOL & OMKARA (inspired by Shakespearean dramas), in the past, KAMINEY stars Shahid Kapur (in a double role for the very first time), Priyanka Chopra as a middle-class Marathi girl, a never seen before kind of role and lastly Amol Gupte (writer of TAARE ZAMEEN PAR) in a negative shade. The music of the film has been scored by director Vishal himself and lyrics by maestro Gulzar.

Synopsis:

Guddu and Charlie are brothers, born and raised in Dharavi, the world’s largest slum dwelling in the heart of the megalopolis, Mumbai.

They also happen to be identical twins, in early twenties, hoping to leave the squalor behind and move into a life of prosperity and dignity. But the similarity ends here.

Guddu works as a trainee in a small NGO firm in the city. He hopes to climb up to the top of the corporate ladder. He wants to be a bona fide member of the burgeoning Indian middle class. His career has only just begun though and the road to bourgeoisie is both long and arduous. Yet Guddu is at it. He is honest, diligent and careful.

Especially careful.

Charlie makes a living hedging bets at the race course. He moves around the plush hordes of the rich and famous at the races. For him this is just a way to make quick money and he dreams of becoming a legitimate bookie one day.

Charlie is street smart, wily and brave. And only for himself.

The brothers don’t like each other. They believe they have nothing in common, not even their speech defect. While Guddu stammers, especially when he is nervous, Charlie has a lisp. The brothers have built their lives so that their paths don’t ever cross. They believe it’s only a question of time before they are out of each other’s sight forever.

All that is about to change. In one day. A day of reckoning. An unusual day; just right for the unusual events that unfold in its course.

Charlie is having a bad day at the office. He has practically bet everything he possesses on a coveted derby race.

But at the last minute, he is double crossed as the race is fixed in their opponent’s favour. He hunts down the jockey and plans to get even when the rival goons burst in. In the ensuing melee, Charlie and friends take off with a getaway car. Not knowing that the car belongs to a ruthless pair of cops, LOBO and LELE, who run drugs for the beach lord, TASHI. Soon enough, Charlie discovers a stash of coke in the boot of the car. All hell now breaks loose as the cops and the drug mafia get after his case. Charlie has to survive. And by his wits alone.

Guddu is performing a street theatre act when his newfound girlfriend, Sweety BHOPE appears on the scene, distraught and announces that she is pregnant. Guddu is shocked at first but realizes quickly that there is no real problem. They can get married right away! They can’t. There is a real problem. Sweety reveals her secret; her brother is Sunil ‘chopper’ Bhope. A Gangster with political ambitions. A ridiculously dangerous man. And he already knows. Sweety informs Guddu that as they speak, her brother’s men are out for his blood.

The story unfolds as the day progresses. Intercut between the parallel stories of the brothers as they run to protect themselves, their dreams and their love. Until a point where it converges and the brothers meet to realize that they only have each other. It is only through trust in each other that they can get out of the mess that they haven’t created. They uncover a deadly political-police-underworld nexus. They discover virtues within themselves they thought didn’t exist. And most important of all, they find each other.
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Cast: Ray Romano as Manny, Queen Latifah as Ellie, John Leguizamo as Sid, Denis Leary as Diego
Director: Carlos Saldanha
Genre: Animation

We know that sequels usually do not match up to the original and Ice Age 3 is a threequel. So you know what I mean.

The bigger the budgets, the less time and money producers seem to spend on writers. This one is of course a children’s movie and they will certainly enjoy the 3D effect, add to it some top-grade animation and equally amazing visual effects, which looks a lot more stunning than the other two Ice Ages.

This time around, the woolly mammoth couple is expecting a child. This fact alone separates their herd. The sloth wants his own kid, and adopts baby dinosaurs. The toothy tiger abandons the group to set off alone. They cut through ice and enter Jurassic age, where dinosaurs keep getting after at them.

There’s a new character introduced in this one, an amusing one-eyed-weasel, who is certainly worth the addition.

But unfortunately all these seem to be lost in a movie that’s entered the theatre without an idea of what to do with itself. Pretty much every minute, a new set of crazy creatures enter this hyper-real animal kingdom. There are a few good lines or two, but absolutely unrelated to the main plot. It’s almost like someone wrote the dialogue, without knowing what the story was.

There are a few amusing moments but they never add up to make this one a wholesome entertainer.
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Funstylers Movie Review:
Sankat City
Film: Sankat City (Drama)
Cast: Kay Kay Menon, Rimmi Sen, Anupam Kher
Direction: Pankaj Advani

Thank God for Bollywood’s independent film movement! No big budgets, no super stars, no glitzy locales. Just a smart story, smartly told with a bunch of smarty-pant actors who have nothing to boast about — no brand equity, no blockbuster fees, no million dollar vanity vans — only an overabundance of talent.

For the record, it was this off-the-mainstream movement which gave us some recent sparkling gems like Khosla Ka Ghosla, Johnny Gaddar, Parzania, Black Friday, Mumbai Meri Jaan, Aamir…to name just a few. Now, it gives Sankat City, another edgy take on Mumbai’s gutter and grime which makes for riveting cinema. Pankaj Advani’s landscape is a page out of Shantaram’s Mumbai’s: the sunless back alleys, the junkyard garages, the C-grade film shoots, the sleazy lodges, the small-time bars, the shadowy godmen and gangster dens. And so are the characters: Guru, a petty car thief with a yen for fish, Mona, a twopenny crook with a derring-do that defies everything, Faujdar, the wacko extortionist, Ganpat, the wicked and wizened car mechanic, Gogi, the junk film producer, Sikandar Khan, the flop actor, Suleiman, the heartless assassin….It’s a motley crowd of drifters and losers who have just one thing in common. They all want to chase the Mumbai dream and get rich quick, any which way in a metropolis that allows ample scope for thuggery and crime to peacefully co-exist with law and order.

Fasten your seat belts for a zany black comedy that begins with Guru (Kay Kay) stealing a car, stuffed with money and ends after a colourful touristy ride through Mumbai’s downside, as our beleaguered hero tries to pay back the lost loot. But not before he connects with the bad Bong girl, Mona (Rimmi Sen), who has her own get-rich-quick mission planned and needs a partner to swindle the pop-corn munching property dealer (Yashpal Sharma). Interestingly, the connection doesn’t end here. Like an intricate web, it keeps adding other interesting links, without losing out on continuity and logic. So, Guru and Mona must first encounter the other wannabe millionaires — the film producer, the actor’s double, the don’s sidekick, the disgruntled chauffeur, the absent-minded mechanic — before they can return don Faujdar’s (Anupam Kher) stolen money.

The film may have a raw look and lack technical finesse, but don’t be fooled. For Sankat City is a roller-coaster ride through downtown Mumbai (or any other metro) with its chota-mota crime and its chatpata characters. Truly, a delectable bhelpuri, marked by some fine acting by the ensemble cast. Standing tall amongst them is the mercurial Kay Kay and the quicksilver Rimmi Sen, who pitches in one of her best performances as the bindaas Bengali badmash, complete with the tacky clothes and the patchy make-up. Savour it.
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Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Produced by: Martin Scorsese, Brad Fischer, Mike Medavoy, Arnie Messer
Written by: Novel: Dennis Lehane
Screenplay: Laeta Kalogridis, Steven Knight
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Emily Mortimer, Michelle Williams, Jackie Earle Haley, Max von Sydow
The latest videos of the upcoming American thriller “Shutter Island” directed by Martin Scorsese starring Leonardo DiCaprio are now online!

The plot of the film travels back to 1954 when two U.S. marshals are called upon the secluded island off the coast of Massachusetts to probe into the mystifying disappearance of a criminally psychopath patient who has committed multiple murders. The story intensifies with projections of natural disasters and secrets disclosing the psychiatric hospital’s past. The roles of two US Marshals; Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule are being played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo respectively.

Based on 2003 novel written by Dennis Lehane and produced by Martin Scorsese, the film is slated to release on October 2, 2009 by Paramount Pictures.

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Funstylers Movie Review:
Director: Piyush Jha
Producer: Sudhir Mishra
Script: Piyush Jha
Starcast: Parzan Dastur, Ayesha Kapoor, R. Madhavan, Sanjay Suri
Music: Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, Sandesh Shandilya, Justin-Uday
Release date: Aug21, 2009
Country: India
Language: Hindi

‘Sikandar’ is a forthcoming Bollywood Hindi film that features terrorism in Kashmir as its backdrop. Previously known in its production stages as ‘Foot Soldier’, the film stars child actors Parzan Dastur and ‘Black’ fame Ayesha Kapoor in the lead roles while other famous actors R. Madhavan, Sanjay Suri are in pivotal roles .
The film is written and directed by Piyush Jha, and produced by Big Pictures and renowned Indian film director and screenwriter Sudhir Mishra, who is known for directing critically acclaimed films like Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi, Dharavi and Chameli.

Filmmaker Piyush Jha persist that Sikander is not just another film set in Kashmir; but it’s a harsh fact to what we call terrorism where the movie tries to present the situation in the trouble-torn Valley through the innocent eyes of children living there.

“Children are the hope of the country and thus this film is very relevant at this time, especially for the younger generation,” Says Jha, the adfilmaker-turned-director. “It’s a film full of hope but told in a manner that is not preachy. It is involving and intriguing and connects at an emotional level.”

Set in J & K valley, the film centers on a teenage boy, who dreams of playing football at the national level. One day, on his way home from a school football match, Sikandar finds a gun lying on the path. Despite reproached by his newly made school friend, the 14 year old Nasreen, Sikandar picks up the gun and thus begins a journey into the darker side of his nature as things change for him thereafter.

Nasreen tries to deter him from giving in to the lure of the gun, but destiny has kept something else written for the teenager. Sikandar gets involved further where the situations go beyond his control, and people get killed. Everything seems to be all dramatic as the happenings occurring alongside Sikandar’s predicament appears to be not connected. With slow progression, the truth gets uncovered and it becomes clear that Sikandar is the innocent victim in a game being played out between the militants, the army, the peace bartering politicians and the religious heads of the little Kashmiri town.

How things unfold in the end, does the innocent teenage friends come out of the dirty game played by the power-driven people and does destiny turns for their better is all ready to raise the curtain soon.

It’s not a children’s film though the film has children as its protagonist, acclaims Jha, who has made two satirical comedies ‘Chalo America’ and ‘King Of Bollywood‘ earlier.Based on an extensive research, the film is made authentic with a lot of study of the Kashmiri culture with considerable travel across the Valley at length made by the director.

The release of the film got delayed mainly due to the strike in Bollywood over the revenue-sharing row between producers and multiplex owners, the producer-director of the said film were waiting for the right slot. Now soon, the movie shot in to what India describes ‘Heaven on earth’ J & K valley will hit theatres with its all-time favorite flavor of the valley culture and northern beauty. Just hope it comes out to be a nice delight for this monsoon.
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There’s arguably no theme in cinema quite as fundamental, as primal, as Cops and Robbers – the genre that Michael Mann has always returned to. Mann loves gangsters, but not as Martin Scorsese does: for Mann, criminal and cop are inseparable, yin and yang, neither truly functioning unless both are edging towards their big showdown.

A Scorsese or perhaps a David Fincher might plausibly have made a film about the 1930s gangster John Dillinger that focused on Dillinger alone. But a Mann gangster has no being without the law on his heels; to Mann, Dillinger is nothing without a pursuing army of G-Men, under the command of a mean-eyed monomaniac.

Oddly, though, in Public Enemies Mann has made a film in which Dillinger himself doesn’t quite register, either as centre of attention or as personality, yet nor do the lawmen. There isn’t the same diamond-sharp focus on counterparts as in Mann’s Heat, nor does Johnny Depp’s anti-hero have the same implacable menace as Tom Cruise’s hitman in Collateral. (Cruise more satanic than Depp? You read right.)

Maybe that’s the film’s counter-intuitive selling point: Depp underacts. The droll barnstormer of Pirates of the Caribbean and Tim Burton’s films downplays it so far that we never know who Dillinger is, other than a cool principle of crime personified. He’s a brutal, cold-eyed man, but also incorporates elements of dashing adventurer (he vaults over a bank barrier in gravity-mocking slo-mo), of raffish wit (told of his prison transfer, he quips, “I have absolutely nothing I want to do in Indiana”) and of matinee idol, a kissing bandit that his moll Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard) simply can’t resist, especially when he shoves aside some inopportune Joe Public.

Yet the one image I retained was of a taciturn soldier of crime with a slicked forelock flopping from his brim. Nor is his adversary quite flesh and blood: Christian Bale’s FBI agent Melvin Purvis is a basilisk-cold tracking machine, but, given Bale’s indifferent charisma, more a walking sheriff’s badge than a person.

Mann prides himself on research, and you can well believe that everything there is to know about Dillinger is contained in the script (Ronan Bennett, Mann and Ann Biderman, based on Bryan Burrough’s book). But I’m damned if I followed much of it, or knew who most of the characters were: they don’t stop to announce themselves, too busy reaching for gats or jumping on to the running boards of fine old automobiles.

You do, however, get an unusual impression of the 1930s in their nowness. As is his wont, Mann shoots in high-definition video, here counteracting that sense we usually get in historical films, that we’re looking from afar at a reconstruction of a distant world. Instead, HD brings the intensity of instantaneous coverage, as if the action were being downloaded live to screen from 70 years ago.

This is especially vivid in the shoot-outs: Mann’s trademark is the gunfight as free-form percussion symphony, bullets blanging off car bonnets. In Public Enemies, the word “gunfire” has rarely seemed so apposite – guns explode in blasts of flame, most dynamically in a sequence staged deep in a forest at night.

Yet Dante Spinotti’s photography can be ugly and distracting: the glare of daylight is electronically abrasive, and while the cameras whip round with fevered agility, the nerviness brings an odd sketchbook quality. The result feels somehow less like a movie than a video run-through for one, just as Mann’s flat, telegraphic TV film LA Takedown was essentially a filmed storyboard for the fully realised Heat.

This wouldn’t matter if Mann were entirely attempting to go Dogme-style and expunging every trace of Hollywood rhetoric from his film. But this isn’t so – particularly when it comes to Elliot Goldenthal’s routinely lush score, pumped up whenever we need to be reminded that there’s romantic heat between Dillinger and Billie.

Public Enemies is frustrating because so much of it is good. While there’s little sense that Mann is interested in strong formal individual images, when he does trouble to frame them, they’re great: an Edward Hopper interior when a cop closes in on Baby Face Nelson, or the long grey prison walls at the start, complete with chain gang shuffling in mint-humbug stripes.

There are good performances too, particularly Billy Crudup’s J Edgar Hoover, bull-necked and officious, and Peter Gerety as Dillinger’s flamboyantly outraged attorney. And the person who truly imparts some warmth is Marion Cotillard. Casually disguising her French accent, she gives Billie a dainty, sexy playfulness. Even if Depp’s muted playing effectively diffuses any sense of grand passion between the couple, Cotillard heats the film up, often with her smile alone – and that testifies to a real degree of proper old-school star quality. The rest? A dark, crowded battlefield on which men in hats fight men in hats, till the last bullet hits its target.

Also Showing: 05/07/2009

Embodiment of Evil (90 mins, 18)

In the mid-1960s, Jose Mojica Marins directed two Brazilian horror films in which he also starred as a sadist named Coffin Joe. He’s finally completed the trilogy with Embodiment of Evil – but the trippy visuals, gory misogyny and bargain-basement effects are still stuck in the Sixties. The paunchy anti-hero now looks more likely to have a coronary than he is to “implode the entire cosmos”, so Embodiment of Evil could end up as a cult midnight movie for fans of kitsch, so-bad-it’s-good psychedelia. The rest of us might wish that Joe had stayed in his coffin.

Strawberry and Chocolate (110 mins, 18)

First released in 1994, and set in 1979, Strawberry And Chocolate is a warm, bright Cuban chamber piece that depicts the friendship between a naive communist student and a subversive gay artist. It’s amazingly outspoken for a film made under Castro, but it’s also a love letter to faded, flaking Havana.

Red Mist (81 mins, 18)

This Northern Irish horror cheapie, left, features some obnoxious medical students being bumped off by a psychic hospital porter, a passable premise that’s thrown away as quickly and thoughtlessly as a post-sneeze tissue.
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