Dillinger (1973)

Director: John Milius

Starring: Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Michelle Phillips, Cloris Leachman, Harry Dean Stanton, Geoffrey Lewis, Richard Dreyfuss

More info: IMDb

Tagline: ...he was the gangster's gangster.

Plot: After a shoot-out kills five FBI agents in Kansas City the Bureau target John Dillinger as one of the men to hunt down. Waiting for him to break Federal law they sort out several other mobsters, while Dillinger's bank robbing exploits make him something of a folk hero. Escaping from jail he finds Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson have joined the gang and pretty soon he is Public Enemy Number One. Now the G-men really are after him.

My rating: 7.5/10

Will I watch it again? Hell, yeah!

"Now nobody get nervous, you ain't got nothing to fear. You're being robbed by the John Dillinger Gang, that's the best there is! These few dollars you lose here today are going to buy you stories to tell your children and great-grandchildren. This could be one of the big moments in your life; don't make it your last"

And thus begins our BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967)-influenced story. Fuck Johnny Depp in that Michael Mann abomination, PUBLIC ENEMIES (2009), Warren Oates IS John Dillinger. Not only does he look like the guy but he's one of the manliest actors we've had in the past forty years and, in that respect, is about as far away from Depp as you can get. You don't see actors like him these days and he seems born to play John Dillinger.


Early on there's a great GOODFELLAS (1990) moment where Homer (Stanton) has a gas station attendant at gunpoint who won't pump gas for him and the gang. Homer's getting impatient and the boys in the car are laughingly egging him on to do something about it. It's not a stretch to see that either Pileggi or Scorsese were influenced by this scene for a similar one in GOODFELLAS.


It's funny seeing a pre-JAWS (1975) Richard Dreyfuss playing Baby Face Nelson, a tough guy who initially mouths off to Dillinger about how he should run his gang. Dillinger instantly beats the snot out of him turning Baby Face into a snivelling little bitch. Nice!


There's also a fantastically edited, fun montage comprised of photos of all of the principle characters using the actors in the film. The images look authentic and surprisingly don't look staged. It's filled with "in-the-moment" shots that are surprisingly different and better than any montage that I've ever seen...and I've seen a lot of montages.


For as much as I love this film there's one thing that really bothers me and that's the handling of G-Man, Melvin Purvis. Now Ben Johnson is much too old for this character (he's 54 while the real man was 30 at the time this takes place) but his presence adds weight and serious acting chops to the guy. That's one thing and it's not Johnson's fault but Purvis is portrayed as a the man who's almost single-handily (I say almost) bringing down one famous gangster after another. He's one macho mother fucker! He does so much of it that it's borderline silly and I just don't buy it. I get why the film makers did it but surely there just had to be a better way of dealing with Purvis in the story.




The bits with Dillinger are much more exciting and fun and Warren Oates' performance is iconic. It's hard not to see this in the shadow of BONNIE AND CLYDE. BaC is certainly a better film and each time I watch DILLINGER I just want to slap in my copy of BaC which is the best way to view it. If you haven't seen either, I'd recommend D first and then BaC in the same night. It'd be a great Depression-era gangster-filled night of fun and with a style of film making that seems lost in today's world.