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and liked it. Great music first of all. Great sets and costumes and cars, etc. I loved the cast and every one, Bale as Purvis, Crudup as Hoover especially, and of course, Depp who looks eerily like Dillinger, really shone in this film.
It was filmed in the part of the country I grew up in and there are a lot of the original locales used to make it. I looked up Dillinger and Purvis on the web after seeing this and was wondering why they decided to change the one fact that does not seem to have become urban myth in this oft-told tale. The lady in red is an icon. They changed it for this movie, but seeing as how the Dillinger family and Billie made some money touring the country after his death to preach against a life of crime may have something to do with that. Maybe they own the lady in red concept or something, I don't know.
Interesting urban myths have sprung up around his death for sure. Maybe he wasn't killed that night (Dillinger had hired at least one, maybe more, to impersonate him while in Chicago) and the coroner's office had such a tough time controlling the scene, etc., that even after that body had been taken to the morgue, bribes allowed many people into the room where he was laid out. The corrupt coroner's office took so many death mask impressions (souvenirs?) of his face that it was unrecognizable when his family members were called to identify him. He also himself had some crude plastic surgery performed to more disguise his face, and that led to further confusion on the night this body was in the morgue. His father swore it was not him. His older sister finally identified a scar from Dillinger's childhood allegedly on one of his legs.
The Chicago Police were so corrupt, Purvis would not allow any of them in on the kill for fear they might tip him off. Many think they did and that it was a double that was killed that night. Those same people also opine that the East Chicago Police Dept. then actually did kill the real Dillinger a couple of nights later after informants identified his whereabouts. The theater manager saw the G-Men waiting conspicuously outside the theater and thought they were a gang ready to hold up the theatear and actually called the Chicago PD, so anyone's guess as to what really went down. See the Wikipedia entry for Dillinger for even more salacious urban myths about him. People of that time desperately needed folk heroes and Dillinger was made to order.
What is utterly undeniable about the tale is that he had become a folk hero in the midst of the Depression. Even now, anyone that was alive in that time, now our dying parents who were kids then, still reactively state "Public Enemy Number One," when his name is mentioned. We heard this last weekend when we visited my mother-in-law, aged 88 and severely demented, who when asked if she remembered Dillinger, immediately recited, "Public Enemy Number One." I wonder if she had been one of those theater goers portrayed in the movie, when the news reel asks "Look to the left, look to the right, if you see any of these men, call the FBI immediately..."
This entire period portrayed in the film took place in 18 months' time. He robbed 24 banks and killed a dozen peace officers in the process. He was a criminal genius for his era, and had become radicalized into a life of crime from a stiff, 9-year prison sentence imposed when he was caught for stealing some food from a local grocery store. He ended up hating his father, who advised him to plead guilty and he did and got the 9 years. What is accurate is that he and Barker and Barrow and Karpis and Floyd and Nelson, etc., were at the end of their era, as organized crime, as portrayed here by the Frank Nitti character, did not want independents spoiling their bribery schemes and their newly established sources of income in protection, gambling, prostitution and drugs. Prohibition had just ended and the organized crime families had finally established themselves. They did not need the attention these bank robbers brought.
Great film and very thought provoking for someone that grew up in the area and heard alot from our elders about those famous characters from the Depression gangster era in this country.
Just my dos centavos
robdogbucky
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