For me this movie was the anti-Transformers II. It's clearly very well made, the acting performances are impeccable and the plot(Despite lacking historical accuracy) has no noticable holes. That said it just fell flat for me. I was as shocked by this as anyone. With the talent involved here you just expect more than what you are given.

Johnny Depp is appropriately charming and unstable, Christian Bale is appropriately forthright and upstanding and provides the most satisfying emotional scene in the movie (You'll know it when you see it), and Marion Cotillard is Marion Cotillard. Unfortunately with rare exception their performances are wasted in this film. They just aren't given enough to do, especially Bale and even though Johnny is given enough screen time the writing leaves him with very few memorable moments.

For several hours after I left the theater I pondered what was wrong with the movie, because on the usual standards by which films are judged this movie was very good. I came to the conclusion that the movie was flawed from inception. The story just wasn't interesting enough as written to succeed. It was just written as a very flat straightforward movie. There's nothing there that really grabs our attention and holds it. **Spoiler** Why have Billy get abused by the supporting character cop if you're not going to pay it off? Why not go into details about Dillinger's heists instead of just having him walk into banks and walk out with the money, sometimes getting caught and sometimes not and then braggin about what a brilliant robber he is? Just made the bravado seem silly. I'll digress from listing any more moments that just didn't work for me. Rest assured their were plenty.

In summary, the movie came across as a history channel show with great actors and really high production values. Who knows, it may even have succeeded at that level if it had bothered to be historically accurate. Why change history if you're not going to embellish? If you're a huge fan of these actors or Michael Mann you can probably enjoy this as a work of cinema, but if you're looking for an emotional response or just to be entertained by the movie you pay 10 dollars to see I can't recommend this movie.