brucewhain

Highly Expert. (Five years could make a lot of difference back then!) Not a speck or instant of misplaced egg. Hokeyness is strictly avoided in spite of the emotional content - the kind of role, I assume, that made Rooney famous. The action moves smoothly, seamlessly, generating tension and resolution along realistic lines. Protagonist Shocky's school oppressors are ra-THER politically IN-correct. That would never go over today.

Convincing story of docklands pilfering racket with actual pols playing themselves, narrated at start and finish. Lots of shots of New Orleans, not all of them flattering. There is a prolonged climax with fast pace, twists and violence starting when he kills the guy. The protagonist becomes an expert on police work when he takes his findings to the authorities.

Things like this are usually better if they stick more or less to known facts. In this case it's so garbled that it's difficult to tell exactly what these peoples' intentions were.

Dillinger is a cartoon character with limited social graces and seldom without some inept business or something awkward to say. It would have been nice - and seems to me particularly film-worthy - to include the part about the amazing plastic surgery that enabled him to avoid capture for a while. But then Wikipedia doesn't include that either, sticking strictly to a well known "after" (as opposed to "before") picture, to ensure implementation of their propaganda goals. Ditto this movie as to intentions.

The result is that the requisite gratuitous violence is so implausible it turns into a cartoon, about a mild-mannered guy who goes around shooting a lot of people without explanation. The criminal characters are so gaseous and dull! Except the one mentor guy, but he's not believable either, due to the stilted Affekt of almost every line and directorial detail. Of course all their names have been changed... to protect the guilty, I suppose.

In real life it was not his long-time squeeze but a hooker working for the FBI that finally lured him into the staked out movie theater. It took her about a year as I recall from reading about 10 years ago. The intentions of the present cinematic squeeze are garbled as well in this regard. (To protect the innocent?) And he didn't die in a pile of back ally garbage, but right in the middle of the sidewalk: Great, if your intentions are in the lines of gruesome noirishness.

There's certainly little that's sinister or noirish about it.