“Nobody did it like DILLINGER… He was the gangster’s gangster!”
The penultimate (one more to come) article celebrating the often told cinematic story of notorious 1930's Chicago gangster John Dillinger and the classic gangster genre of film history in preparation for the upcoming release of Johnny Depp/Christian Bale/Michael Mann's Public Enemies. You can find our previous articles here... His story is written in bullets, blood and blondes! - Dillinger (1945)James Cagney: The Real Public EnemyPublic Enemy #1 - Top Ten Gangster Films! All our articles dealing with Public Enemies (review coming Monday)
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I rob banks for a living. What do you do?John Milius Dillinger (1973) is not the way it was - just the way it should have been. Bullets and broads, sharp suits and fast cars, men outside the law and desperate G-Men hot on their tale. This isnt the true story of John Dillinger, this is the legend. And it rips at your heart like a Tommy gun spittin out lead. Fans of Milius later work shouldnt be surprised. After all this was the director who gave us the blood and thunder of Conan the Barbarian (1982) and the writer who penned both Dirty Harrys Do you feel lucky, punk, and Quints macabre tale of the Indianapolis in Jaws (1974). Already we can see a filmmaker obsessed by Godlike men men who hurl lightning bolts at each other and tread water in a sea of bodies. Dillinger, his directorial debut, was the beginning of such things.
Those few dollars that you loose are going to buy you stories to tell your children and grandchildren. This could be your big moment in lifedont make it your last.Slowly he begins to believe the image he has created for himself and later, when challenged by one of his gang (Baby Face Nelson, played by a snakelike Richard Dreyfus), he tells him:
Im immortal you punk. Im John Dillinger!By portraying him in this fashion Milius gets to play with both the legend and the grim reality (Dillinger the man vs Dillinger the legend). The shootouts between hoods and narks reiterate this split dynamic. They are epic graceful and bloody as the streets get rained on with gunfire - but there is a real brutality here too. Dillinger shoots an old security guard in cold blood and the getaway car unflinchingly runs down an old lady, leaving her mangled on the street.