A short one, since I didn’t have that many things to say about it.
What’s it’s Bechdel Test rating?
33%. Failure.
I wasn’t expecting great things about this movie in that regard, seeing as it takes place in the 1930s and is about gangsters. However, it’s a true story, and there were actually quite a few woman characters – and in the real world, those women would’ve talked to each other! But, one of the flaws of this movie was tooooo many characters. Two of the women actually do things that move the plot along however.
What About Minorities?
The main love interest is a half-French half-Native woman, and she’s a pretty cool character. She also doesn’t fall into a stereotype, which was refreshing, and she has one of my favourite lines: “My mother was a Menominee Indian, most men don’t like that.” However, she was played by French actress Marion Cotillard, who is great, but I’m pretty sure is not half-Native. Knowing plenty of Native actors, some of which are biracial or mixed, some of which are not, I was a little saddened to see a white actress play a Native character.
Especially since you have biracial actor Stephen Graham (a personal favourite), playing a white character. In both cases, not doing too much to increase visibility of minorities, even though you have minority actors and minority characters. This is one of the ways where minorities get swallowed up – they are in film as characters, but are played by whites. Or, they act in film, but can pass as white and play white characters. It gets frustrating.
What’s right with it?
All the acting was great. I felt the performances were the strongest part of this film. Marion Cotillard, despite being the wrong race, acted her face off. She was excellent in it, as was Branka Katic, who had a small but important role, and was really good in it.
And you know who else was good in it? Stephen Graham! He was the little sidekick guy in Snatch, ages and ages ago (ten years?!). He’s brutal in this movie. He plays Baby Faced Nelson, who loves shooting people and is a frickin’ psychopath. He was very sadly underutilized. He was in far fewer scenes than I thought he would be. The movie was, obviously, mostly about John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), but Baby Faced Nelson was a totally interesting character too, and I had more fun watching Stephen Graham than Depp.
What’s wrong with it?
I actually found this film a little lifeless and boring. It dragged on way too long, and never really caught my attention, except for the eye-rattling tommy-gun battles. That might just be personal preference though – I’m not a huge fan of gangster movies, and a lot of times with period pieces I just find myself musing about how much harder everything must’ve been back then. There wasn’t anything particular in this film that really caught my attention.
There were too many characters, which is tricky in true stories because, well, there were a lot of people there. But it ended up stretching the story over all these characters, and not giving us enough insight into any of them to really care that much. I actually can’t think of too many things to say about this movie, except that I can imagine people who are really into history, or gangsters, or who are suckers for romances (even through the romance isn’t that big in the story, despite some reviews saying it is) would enjoy it a lot. I thought it was just boring, and nothing to write home about.
But it was a pretty good movie! Read on…
