So I saw 'Public Enemies'

Johnny Depp serves his John Dillinger character straight up in this recount of the public enemy's life which, as can be expected from a Depp character, is just what is needed.

Depp's Dillinger is brawny and smart, and has a major chip on his shoulder (as a result of a lengthy stint in jail and, possibly, an abusive dad while growing up in Indiana). He's explosive, the kind of childhood friend you'd be wary of hanging around with as a kid because all kinds of shit could happen when he's around.

Director Michael Mann brings, as can be expected from a Mann piece, cool soundtracks and realistic gunfights to the table. He's also cast Christian Bale as G-man Melvin Purvis, who returns everything Dillinger has to offer but with detached professionalism. Which overall makes for a cool cerebral flick.

(Running time: 140 minutes)

So I saw 'Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen'

I've got a little theory: the longer you look forward to a movie, the smaller the pay-off will be. For instance, this is true for Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds (2005), which I looked forward to for almost a year but when it finally came out my expectations had got build up so high, it didn't stand a chance.

The same is also true for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Which was bound to happen following yours truly partaking for more than a year in the online buzz surrounding this follow-up to Transformers (2007).

Transformers hit me like a train because the hype preceding it largely escaped me, and when it hit theatres my enthusiasm was very much intact; I had after all no expectations, I went in with a clean sheet. With ROTF I left crumbs of my enthusiasm with every post I made online, so when the movie hit theatres it was pretty much chipped away at.

ROTF picks up where Transformers left two years after. Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is off to college, he's in love with high school sweetheart Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox), and everything is peaches and cream until he lays hands on and touches a stray fragment of the Cube and starts to see strange symbols projected inside his head. Separately, a special combat unit which, with the help of the Autobots, has been searching and destroying stray Decepticons on planet Earth, learns about the presence of the Fallen (Megatron's superior). The two subplots intertwine when it is identified that the symbols are key to identifying the location of an ancient energy-generating machine which the Fallen yearns to posses for his schemes and which, if activated, would use up our Sun as fuel.

The movie's tonal feel has a Saturday-morning-cartoon quality to it, which I assume is the only quality you want to strive for in a movie that is based on a Saturday morning cartoon. On a critical note: there's too much stuff going on. The action scenes, the explosions are rather numbing and take away from the funny and the magic that made Transformers Transformers. Considering that even Two-Face in The Dark Knight (2008) felt excessive, ROTF could certainly do with less.

Bigger is not always better.

(Running time: 150 minutes)