Cast:
Warren Oates (John Dillinger), Ben Johnson (Melvin Purvis), Michelle Phillips (Billie Frechette), Cloris Leachman (Anna Sage), Harry Dean Stanton (Homer Van Meter), Geoffrey Lewis (Harry Pierpont), John Ryan (Charles Mackley), Richard Dreyfuss (Baby Face Nelson), Steve Kanaly (Pretty Boy Floyd), John Martino (Eddie Martin), Roy Jenson (Samuel Cowley), and Read Morgan (Big Jim Wollard) Written and Directed by John Milius (#323 - Conan the Barbarian [1982])
Review:
"Films are always pretentious. There's nothing more pretentious than a filmmaker. You know, an egotistical filmmaker who thinks that they're doing God's gift to humanity or something – it's just entertainment. It's not really too much different than the carnies."
Sure, let's focus our attention to another writer-turned-director. John Milius loved to read and from a young age, he did his own short stories that he could "write in almost any style" (Hemingway, for example). One of his early loves was surfing (he once called it a religion of his), but he apparently was guided to film when encountering a marathon screening of the films of Akira Kurosawa. He studied at the USC School of Cinematic Arts (as taught by Irwin Blacker) and persisted studying there even with an attempt at trying to volunteer for the Vietnam War (which did not work out due to asthma); he has stated that his writing style was guided by his favorite works in literature with Moby Dick and On the Road. Milius started writing scripts in 1968, and he soon found a job with commissions and the story department of American International Pictures. He did a few re-writes with The Devil's 8 (1968), for example. 1972 saw the release of two of his scripts into film: The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (he wanted Oates to play the lead instead of Paul Newman) and Jeremiah Johnson. He did uncredited contributions on Dirty Harry (1971) and thus wound up being the first draft writer for the sequel Magnum Force (which was radically changed). By this point, Milius wanted to be a director to have control with his scripts and thus asked AIP if he could direct a film for them, and the result was he chose to do a gangster film over other apparent choices in Blacula or Black Mama, White Mama; the result was Dillinger (1973). Over his career, Milius directed six more movies and wrote a handful of others, whether that was his efforts with the deeply personal Big Wednesday (1978) and Red Dawn (1984).
The real story of Dillinger (once described by Milius as a "pure criminal") goes as such: the Indianapolis native had done a handful of petty thefts before entering and later leaving the United States Navy. He served jailtime for nearly a decade on an assault he did in a botched robbery before becoming a more noted criminal upon his release in 1933 that would include the first of dozens of bank robberies (as done by him and his eleven known co-conspirators in his gang) that saw ten killed and plenty injured; Dillinger was charged with the murder of a cop in that time. The manhunt had agents of the Bureau of Investigation (which soon evolved into the FBI) involved such as Melvin Purvis, since one of Dillinger's crimes was stealing a car and dragging it across state lines. Dillinger was in fact shot and killed on July 22, 1934 after a tip-off. To quibble with the historical accuracy of fact meeting fiction with Dillinger can be researched for oneself (or just look at the "Historical accuracy" page on Wikipedia, I suppose^). Exploits of Dillinger proved an inspiration for various films such as Public Hero #1 (1935), Dillinger (1945; Lawrence Tierney played the title role), Young Dillinger (1965; Nick Adams played the lead), and even later on with Public Enemies (2009; Johnny Depp played the lead)*. Milius was clearly interested in making a folk tale about how people just gravitated to paying attention to a criminal as devastating as Dillinger. In fact, J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the BOI/FBI for over four decades, wrote a statement renouncing gangster films prior to his death (which is read in the credits by Paul Frees): "Dillinger was a rat that the country may consider itself fortunate to be rid of, and I don't sanction any Hollywood glamorization of these vermin. This type of romantic mendacity can only lead young people further astray than they are already, and I want no part of it." In later years, Milius considered the film to be one that is "very crude, but I do find it immensely ambitious", one in which a lack of budget meant being creative with shots and timing.**
Sure, one might think about Bonnie and Clyde (1967) in terms of sheer audacity, but Dillinger is a movie with quite the punch in crude mayhem that does not wish to sympathize with its main focus but instead just shows the chaos and appeal that could come with a man ready to rob the time he lived in. Oates was a regular in countless Western TV shows and movies and clearly was a pro when given material to actually work with, and this is a pretty neat highlight for his timing here. He has this energy to him that grabs your attention with a certain type of charm that comes with cocksure attitude that knows who to have eating out of the palm of his hand. Johnson actually was quite older than the actual Purvis***, but he is such a pro at this that one wouldn't even think about it because he just has that understated type of charm that might as well be playing in a Western to give it his efforts. It probably works best to see him in the scene where he questions a youth about their perceptions of Dillinger when compared to the government-men chasing him that might as well be a shadow in the eyes of the public that could only have wonder at an outlaw bucking the system (at least, up to a point, this isn't Robin Hood). The rest of the cast make a relatively fine ensemble in the bits and pieces you see them when interacting with, well, the larger-than-life Oates, whether that involves the worthwhile time observing Stanton or even seeing the soon-to-be-prominent Dreyfuss. It is an interesting type of folk tale of mayhem and the nature of idols that come from the meanest and leanest of sources held together by commitment from Milius and Oates to really make it a tale worthy of the drive-in and beyond.
Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.
^Truth vs. Fiction: The Bank-Robbing Style of Warren Oates as Dillinger » BAMF Style. Also, if you like a different insight: Experience of my famous uncle, Melvin Purvis, with Hoover's jealousy and with Nazi Hermann Göring - PMC
*Incidentally, Roger Corman's New World Pictures was behind a semi-related Dillinger film with The Lady in Red (1979). He later produced the 1995 TV "speculative fiction" movie Dillinger and Capone that had Martin Sheen as Dillinger and F. Murray Abraham as Al Capone!
** One year after the release of the film, a television movie was written by Milius (albeit co-written by William F. Nolan) called Melvin Purvis: G-Man. It had Dale Robertson play the title role in the pursuit of Machine Gun Kelly. Dan Curtis directed it along with another TV movie involving Robertson as Purvis with The Kansas City Massacre (1975), although Milius was only involved with the first of the two (and didn't even like making it).
***Purvis was born in 1903, for example. He really did have a strange life when you consider that in the three decades after he left the Bureau, he served in the U.S. Army during World War II and even rose to colonel, bought out a person to solely own a radio station, and, well, dying in 1960 by the gun that his fellow agents gave to him when he left the Bureau. Compared to Hoover, Purvis sounds like a neat person. Also, before I forget, *Academy Award winning actor* Ben Johnson.
