Finally got to see “Public Enemies,” Michael Mann’s Dillinger movie with Johnny Depp in the starring role.  I got out of my last movie theater a lot smoother than the real John Dillinger got out of his. I enjoyed the tremendous attention to period correct detail in everything from the clothes to, of course, the firearms. I just wish that Mann, one of our great action film directors who admittedly doesn’t work for The History Channel, had gone a bit more true to the actual, fascinating story.

If you track down this blog to a bit over a year ago, I wrote about my anticipation of seeing this film after being in Chicago where they filmed it on location. Good Lord, the Crown Point, Indiana jailbreak was filmed at the actual Crown Point Jail, and the notorious Little Bohemia Lodge shootout was filmed at the actual site!  They were period correct right down to the holsters, including the double shoulder holsters for Colt .45 autos that Dillinger was known to wear.

That said, the historical accuracies disappoint.  The film opens with Melvin Purvis chasing Pretty Boy Floyd through an apple orchard. Floyd shoots at him (one-handed at one point!) with a Thompson submachine gun, and Purvis then single-handedly kills him with one shot from a European bolt-action hunting rifle (admittedly correct for the period.) However, history shows that this happened many weeks after Dillinger was killed; Floyd was armed with a pair of Colt pistols, one of which was converted to full auto; it was a cornfield, not an orchard; and while Purvis did indeed empty his snub-nose .38 Colt Detective Special at the fleeing Pretty Boy, it is believed to have been a rifle in the hands of one of the many other lawmen firing at the fugitive that ended Floyd’s life.

The film shows Melvin Purvis killing Baby Face Nelson at the end of the Little Bohemia shootout. Totally wrong. While Purvis and Nelson shot at each other that night, neither scored a hit. Purvis’ Thompson failed to fire and he dropped it and opened up with his handgun. Nelson was killed several months after Dillinger’s death, in a gunfight with Agents Sam Cowley and Herman Hollis, who both died at his hands. The real story of that can be found HERE.

“Public Enemies” portrays Dillinger’s death outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago closer to the truth than any other movie I’m aware of, but it’s still a bit off from the historical record. The agent with drawn revolver who freezes in fear when Dillinger turns and sees him, presumably Herman Hollis, didn’t do that. Hollis fired at him.  So did Agent Clarence Hurt, a veteran gunfighter out of Oklahoma. And so did Agent Charles Winstead, who is correctly depicted as killing Dillinger with a .45 “Government Automatic” as Dillinger draws a Colt Pocket Model .380 from his right front trouser pocket, also correctly depicted by the meticulous Mann. Nor does it include the two innocent female bystanders who were wounded by errant bullets in the actual shooting. My take on Dillinger’s death can be found HERE.  However, the scene at the end of the movie (I won’t spoil it for you here) in which Winstead contacts the late Dillinger’s bereaved girlfriend Billie Frechette, appears to be total fiction.

There’s more. I’ve shot a lot of Thompson submachine guns, and they don’t spit great sheets of flame as they do in this and most other movies. Those great old guns fire the .45 ACP cartridge. ACP stands for Automatic Colt Pistol, and even back then the rounds were optimized to burn their powder in the 5” barrel of a 1911 Colt like the ones Dillinger favored.  The powder is already burnt up by the time the bullet exits the much longer barrel of a Tommy Gun. No muzzle flash. That part is Hollywood fiction.

At least the movie did show the armed citizen who wounded Dillinger and one of his colleagues, even if it had the shots placed wrong and fired from a 19th Century rifle instead of a 19th Century revolver. Could’ve been more there, though: see THIS link. Thanks for that, Mr. Mann…and thanks to Johnny Depp and the others for realistic gun handling.  Rumor has it that Depp is One Of Us, a “gun guy,” and now owns the Thompson he wielded in the movie.

It could have been so much more, from the “real history” side. But, you know what? It’s still a helluva flick, and I still enjoyed it.  If you watch it, let us know here what you thought of it.

Some more related links:
FBI info on Dillinger

The book on which the movie is based

Comments in the LA Times from the author of the book on the movie version

Outside the Crown Point Jail. (No sweat, open carry is legal in Indiana.)

The Crown Point jailbreak was filmed here, where it actually happened.

Melvin Purvis emptied an early model Colt Detective Special at Pretty Boy Floyd, not a Mauser sporting rifle with set trigger as depicted in the film.

The real John Dillinger, seen here on the cover of Dary Matera’s biography, did indeed prefer the 1911 .45 pistol.

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Yesterday, the appellate court overturned the murder conviction of Harold Fish in Arizona, and remanded it for a new trial.  This is indeed welcome news.

Fish is the retired schoolteacher who was hiking when attacked by an emotionally disturbed person and his two dogs.  He wound up having to shoot the assailant, who died of three gunshot wounds. The lead investigator originally determined the shooting to be justifiable, but friends of the deceased apparently prevailed on the prosecutor to press charges. You can download a ProArms podcast in which a man close to the case discusses some of what went on, while guest-lecturing at one of my classes in Phoenix last year.

The jury was not allowed to know just how violent the dead man had been. Nor were the jurors given proper instructions on what constitutes self-defense.  Both of these errors are cited in the higher court’s decision to reverse, found in its entirety HERE .

The case is well known to gun people because the death weapon was Fish’s Kimber 10mm semiautomatic pistol, loaded with Federal hollow point ammunition, and the prosecution made a huge deal about the powerful weapon and its deadly dum-dum bullets. These arguments were not effectively countered by defense counsel at trial, and jurors later stated that these factors did indeed influence their decision to convict.  Significantly, none of that is addressed in the appellate court’s opinion, which tells us that it’s wise to be able to explain to lay people on a jury why we use the firearms and ammo we do to protect ourselves.

I personally thought the conviction of Harold Fish was a travesty of justice.  Here’s hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel of the long ordeal this good man has needlessly suffered.

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