It's a theme he's visited repeatedly, in "Miami Vice" (both film and television), "Crime Story," "Manhunter," "Heat" and now "Public Enemies."
His latest features Johnny Depp as John Dillinger, whose bank-robbing spree made him a pulpy, populist hero during the Great Depression, when banks were not as beloved as they are now.
Dillinger's exploits had a cinematic, bigger-than-life arc - he staged daring jail breaks, tore across the plains in V8 hot rods robbing one bank after another, all while wearing sharp suits and wielding a Thompson submachine gun. (If there's a more cinematic weapon than the tommy gun, I've yet to see it, and the "Public Enemies" sound/prop/photo technicians do a great job making the gun freshly formidable.)
It was the gilded age of media-branded criminals - Baby Face Nelson (a Dillinger associate), Pretty Boy Floyd - and it saw the not-coincidental rise of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) uses the success of the tabloid criminals to make a case for the expansion of his growing FBI fiefdom, billed as a new kind of law enforcement, staffed by formally educated professionals.
Alas, his newfangled Ivy League G-men haven't the tactical experience or the backbone to apprehend men like Dillinger. So argues one of Hoover's top agents, Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale). He's appointed by Hoover to stop Dillinger, and makes the case that he can't succeed unless he's allowed to bring in some hard-nosed lawmen (including Mann regular Stephen Lang) from Texas and Oklahoma.
So the classic Mann setup is formed - smart and dedicated men on either side of the law, working with cool precision to destroy the other.
There are other familiar Mann figures here - the woman who both loves and fear the obsessions of her man. Here it's Marion Cotillard as Dillinger's lover, a fellow social outcast for whom money means access to speakeasy society.
