Johnny Depp Misfires in 'Public Enemies' It's tough to watch Johnny Depp these days when he's not wearing eyeliner and a monkey on his shoulder. Christian Bale, however, looks fine without a bat suit. The pluses: "Public Enemies" looks great. Men in dark suits wage war in the marbled halls of capitalism. They lope like wolves into banks, snatch fistfuls of money and live large in the face of the Great Depression . The problem is casting. There's no electricity to the rivalry between Depp and Bale. Under the stewardship of a prideful J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup), the FBI strikes back at John Dillinger (Johnny Depp). Leading the manhunt is stone-faced agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale). The movie is a tussle of trigger-happy men duking it out in the Midwest under a Hoover-mandated "national war on crime." The movie's real pulse comes from French actress Marion Cotillard who plays Dillinger's girlfriend, Billie Frechette, a coat-check girl whose life changes forever when she agrees to an impromptu date. As seen through Billie's working-class eyes, the great crime wave of the early '30s was about the collateral damage. The high-octane misadventures of Dillinger and his peers captured the nation's attention, but they also shattered the lives of innocent bystanders who were gunned down or wrecked emotionally. If only Depp and Bale had matched the fire in Cotillard's eyes before the credits rolled, "Public Enemies" might've really popped.