"PUBLIC ENEMIES": JUST WHAT THE BANKS NEED

"Public Enemies" with Johnny Depp Over Independence Day weekend Michael Mann, acclaimed director of such films as "Heat", "The Insider" and "Collateral", released another beautiful crime drama about an infamous Midwestern bank robber, John Dillinger. Over the course of a 14-month crime spree during the Great Depression, Dillinger came to be viewed by much of the press and public as a modern-day Robin Hood. "Public Enemies", based on the book of the same name by Bryan Burrough, a Vanity Fair correspondent, is the seventh film to be made about the short-lived bandit turned folk hero. By many accounts, it is also the most elegant. Aided by Johnny Depp's star power, the film has raked in over $66.5m thus far at the domestic box office.

While the film is not a diatribe against the banking excesses that lead to both the Great Depression and what is now being referred to (perhaps optimistically) as our “Great Recession”, banks and their guardians have not taken its release lightly. Perhaps afraid that moviegoers would be inspired by what David Denby described as a “flowing, velvety fantasia of the crime wave”, banks have posted signs declaring, “No Hats, No Hoods, No Sunglasses, No Guns”. The president of the Wisconsin Bankers Association explained to a reporter from the St. Paul Pioneer Press that customers who keep their shades on will still be served, but “everyone in the bank will be watching them more closely.”

Union bank

In New York, the release of "Public Enemies" coincided with a row between the city’s banks and Raymond Kelly, the police commissioner. Some local banks have resisted the order to install bullet-proof fortifications—so-called “bandit barriers”—around their tellers (for reasons both cost-related and cosmetic). The police department has criticised banks "for setting up their branches to look more like living rooms than businesses engaging in transactions involving large sums of cash,” reported the New York Times. Robberies in the city have gone up 57% over the past year, and have trended upwards nationally.

If the old adages that life imitates art and history repeats itself hold true, then banks would be wise to heed Commissioner Kelly’s advice. As Frank Rich pointed out in a scathing column on Bernie Madoff and Wall Street, “In the most devastating economic catastrophe since Dillinger’s time, many Americans know all too well that justice has yet to be served.” As John Dillinger’s life and legacy make clear, justice can seem to mean different things in different times.

~ CORBIN HIAR

Picture Credit: "Public Enemies" (Universal), royal_broil (via Flickr)