13 Hyped Movie Roles That Were Total Cop-Outs

4. John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) - Public Enemies

Remember when everyone was convinced that this Michael Mann-directed John Dillinger biopic was set to be a bonafide masterpiece?

While hardly a bad movie by any means, it was a decidedly more workmanlike and generic period crime flick than anyone really wanted to see from a master filmmaker.

The knock-on effect is that this limited Johnny Depp's ability to really convince us that he was Dillinger, and he never much rose above feeling like Depp playing a gangster in dress-up.

He was clearly trying, to his credit, but between Mann's garish digital shooting, that jarring sequence where Depp's face is digitally pasted on a stunt double during a bank robbery and the disappointingly boilerplate script, this isn't the definitive Dillinger movie everybody was hoping for.

This should've been a slam-dunk Oscar play for Depp, but instead it was just...fine.