Universal Pictures

Johnny Depp plays John Dillinger — a confident man of the people who became famous for robbing banks.

"Public Enemies" is a taut and ultra-stylish cops-and-robbers movie from director Michael Mann.

The cops are the agents of the fledgling FBI under the directorship of a young J. Edgar Hoover. The robbers are the bank specialists of the Great Depression who were treated by the public and press like rock stars. They included Pretty Boy Floyd, Alvin Karpis, Baby Face Nelson and the most charismatic, John Dillinger.

Based on Bryan Burrough's book of the same title, this picture focuses on Dillinger, his lady friend and the G-man who swears to bring him down. If you want charisma, Johnny Depp is the go-to guy. Here, he plays Dillinger as a confident, cool man of the people who loves his work and scorns the future.

The movie begins with a prison escape engineered by Dillinger at the Indiana State Prison. If the farm-boy-turned-outlaw was good at robbing banks, he was also good at busting himself and others out of jail.

Once out of prison, Dillinger proceeds to live the high life and he meets a beautiful coat-check girl played by the captivating Marion Cotillard. Her name is Billie Frechette and she's swept off her feet by the charming and persistent bank robber.

Meanwhile, the FBI is embarrassed by the wave of lawlessness that's sweeping the country. Hoover, played by Billy Crudup, is as much concerned about the bad press for his new agency as he is about catching the crooks.

He assigns Melvin Purvis to lead the task force charged with capturing Dillinger. Christian Bale plays the tough, relentless G-man who replaces Hoover's college boys with hardened lawmen from Texas. Meanwhile, Dillinger, Karpis and the psychotic Baby Face Nelson collaborate like crime-spree frat brothers.

Mann and his co-writers give the love story and the shoot-outs a subtext of explanations of why the freewheeling bank robbers of the time came to an end. On the one hand, more sophisticated crime-fighting techniques were being employed. On the other, organized crime syndicates were distancing themselves from individualistic crooks who were bringing federal heat onto mob operations.

The gold standard for all movies about Depression-era bank robbers is Arthur Penn's "Bonnie and Clyde." Not only did it offer ground-breaking action footage; it offered complicated character studies of the self-deluded, sexually dysfunctional crooks who believed their own press.

Mann doesn't give us characters with that kind of emotional firepower. Depp and Cotillard are star-crossed lovers without a lot of down time to flesh out their relationship.

What Mann does deliver is a visually potent period piece. The art direction is evocative of the era, the automatic-weapons shoot-outs are intense and the way the business of crime evolved is economically but effectively sketched.