Customer Reviews

Dillinger [VHS]

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is not a completely true story. This is not a documentary. It is just a fun movie to watch based very loosely on a few gangsters around the early to mid 1930's. The lead roles are bank robber John Dillinger and FBI agent Melvin Purvis. While trying to capture or kill Dillinger, Purvis runs across a few other notable gangsters of the day. If you want true history, don't get it from Hollywood, head to your local library. If you want to watch a fun movie, check this one out. I believe that many people write reviews to impress others with their knowledge of history. If I was sitting in a college class, that may be significant. While I am watching a movie, who cares?

This is one of the fastest moving movies you're likely to ever see. Warren Oates was the only man to play the part of John Dillinger (he even looks like him). When Harry Dean Stanton says "things aren't workin' out for me today", you gotta laugh. Whether it's romanticized or not, who cares. It's a fun movie to watch and if you like to see lots of spent brass flyin', you'll love it. My only 2 regrets are that it's not on DVD and that it's recorded in the LP mode on the VHS.

Films about historical events that play fast and loose with the facts usually get under my skin...big time.That aside,I must say that I really enjoyed this film, despite the fact it seemed to get very few of the essential facts right.Ben Johnson was miscast
Melvin Purvis as well as Harry Dean Stanton as Homer Van Meter, but both were great as always.Warren Oates is one heck of a character actor and as character actors go,can do no wrong(the man's a genius).The butchering job on the history was done,I assume,to facilitate a smoother narrative and keep the movies length from expanding into epic like proportions.The scene depicting Van Meter's demise was a brilliant piece of black humor(most obviously based on pages 123 and 124 of John Toland's "The Dillinger days")but in actuality the whole incident happened *before* the shootout at "Little Bohemia" and to an earlier gang member,James Jenkins(Van Meter bought the farm in St.Paul MN).A previous reviewer mentioned the length of the gun battles and couldn't have been more dead on...If that kind of battle had happened at the Little Bohemia lodge I think all of Rhinelander Wisconsin would have been destroyed!All done in the grand Hollywood tradition (think "Gunfight at the OK Corral") of padding an actual event to get the most mileage (and violence) out of it.This movie was great fun...Just don't delude yourself into believing you know the real story after viewing this film.

"Dillinger" is not a particularly well-known movie, but it stands up well against other 1970s movies that explored the 1930s (Paper Moon, Bonnie & Clyde). Warren Oates stars as the notorious bank robber, John Dillinger. Oates is a great character actor and its terrific to see him in a starring role. Why he did not become a bigger star is a mystery. The movie does a great job capturing the barren depression-era Midwest. Real-life news reels are mixed in with the action to help make it more authentic.

The supporting cast is also fantastic. Harry Dean Stanton is quite funny and Steve Kanaly (later a star of "Dallas") has one of his best movie roles as Pretty Boy Floyd. This is probably the best movie that director John Milius has made (he later made "Conan the Barbarian" and "Red Dawn"). The movie is fast-paced and fun. What is lacks in historic accuracy it more than makes up for with non-stop action. The DVD doesn't have any extras, but I still recommend it.

Following Arthur Penn's 1967 hit `Bonnie and Clyde,' Hollywood enjoyed a brief fling with Depression-era gangsters. The free-wheeling Woodstock generation found something to like about the anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian, legendary outlaws of their parents' youth.

Legendary bank robber John Dillinger certainly fit the bill. In John Milius's DILLINGER we meet the title character, played by Warren Oates, at the height of his career. John Dillinger is a notorious character with enough wit to recognize he's doing the rubes a favor, of sorts, every time he holds up a bank. It gives those robbed something to talk about and remember. Anyway, Dillinger seemingly relies on efficient professionalism over firepower. At least he don't shoot lessen he's shot at, which is a sight better than gun happy thug Baby Face Nelson (Richard Dreyfuss,) who joins the gang mid-movie. And, as such things were measured back then, probably better than what we get from Dillinger hunting alpha G-Man Melvin Purvis (Ben Johnson). We get an awful lot of Purvis in this movie - he supplies the periodic voice over narration and gets about equal screen time with Oates. Milius would write the teleplay for 1974's `Melvin Purvis, G-MAN,' which starred another gruff voiced character action, Dale Robertson.

The parallel story telling works well enough, although Dillinger gets lost a time or two. We get to tag along with Purvis a few times when he has big showdown with public enemies, and they're very well handled. The Depression, which has figured prominently as a social setting and explanation for do-badders, is set deep in the background and isn't much of a factor. Dillinger, as he tells his girlfriend/common law wife Billie Frechette (Michelle Phillips, in her debut,) just always wanted to be a bank robber, and that was that. Towards the end the story does fall apart a bit. Dillinger disappears completely in the last act, which is dominated by Purvis's negotiations with the Lady in Red (Cloris Leachman as Anna Sage, the madam who arranged for Dillinger's capture outside a movie house in Chicago.)

Besides John Dillinger, Milius has either scripted, directed, or both movies on Geronimo, Teddy Roosevelt, Jeremiah Johnson and Judge Roy Bean. Legendary Americans all, and Milius is very much a `print the legend' director. Sometimes you get the feeling that if it doesn't lend itself to a photo op Milius isn't much interested in it. It makes for good action flicks, shaky history lessons, and frustration for those who like character development. Johnson (a good actor) and Oates (a very good actor) make their characters more compelling than written. After a big shootout (excitingly recreated in the movie) and his flight to Chicago Dillinger's life kind of fell apart. He'd separated from Billie and underwent plastic surgery. Perhaps because he thought the plastic surgery might confuse the audience - perhaps - Milius decided to ignore Dillinger in Chicago, save for Purvis's plot to capture him. Heck, I would have been happy with a whole movie, starring Oates, of course, about Dillinger in Chicago. Probably best suited for gangster movie fans, or fans of Ben Johnson and Warren Oates.

Violent, intense and romantic tale of infamous Depression era gangster, John Dillinger by noted action / drama director John Milius is historically inaccurate, but still a very enjoyable gangster film for fans of the genre....and a bonus to now have it available on DVD !!

Cerebral actor Warren Oates plays fiery John Dillinger with aplomb, and Ben Johnson is the intrepid FBI agent Melvin Purvis, hot on the trail of America's Public Enemy number 1. Dynamic support cast portrays Dillinger's gang...Harry Dean Stanton as Homer van Meter, Geoffrey Lewis as Harry Pierpoint and John Ryan is Charlie Mackley. Additionally, Richard Dreyfuss is the cowardly killer, Baby Face Nelson and Steve Kanaly plays the "Robin Hood of the Cookson Hills", Pretty Boy Floyd.

Milius makes great use of color and monochrome shots (many portions of movie appear to be shot through a sepia colored filter) and racy newsreel look to selected sequences with hard edged jazz score accompanying the visuals. Film covers birth of gang and several high profile incidents including the deadly shoot out at Little Bohemia lodge, plus Dillingers daring escape from Indiana's Crown Point jail....and finally his comeuppance outside the Biograph Theatre in Chicago where he was shot dead by FBI agents.

If you like your gangster films fast paced and with machine guns blazing...then this one belongs in your collection !!

Interesting footnote: It was argued for years that it wasn't Dillinger shot dead outside the Biograph, but rather a look-alike, petty thief named Jimmy Lawrence. Dillinger was apparently aware of the FBI plot and decided to retire from the bank robbing game for good. During the mid 1970's a letter arrived at a Los Angelas newspaper, together with a photo of an old man, the writer claimed to be Dillinger and the letter apparently contained information about Dillinger that was not freely available...nothing further was ever heard from the writer !

I have seldom seen better casting than in this gangster classic, which is without a doubt the best movie ever made on John Dillinger. I disagree with the reviewers who say Ben Johnson was miscast as Melvin Purvis. I think he was perfect in the role although his character really came out looking like a villian. I know that this film gets many facts wrong, but it is a movie, not a documentary. Warren Oates looks a lot like Dillinger & gives a flawless performance. I don't know why he didn't become a bigger star after this was released. Although filmed over 30 years ago, the shootouts are some of the best I've ever seen in any action movie. In fact, I think the only movie that tops "Dillinger" in shootouts is 1995's "Heat". This has a brilliant blend of action & romance that will command everyone's attention from start to finish. The dvd's picture quality is good but not great & the only special feature is the theatrical trailer. But this dvd is so inexpensive that everyone who enjoys gangster films should buy it.

The Depression era was the boom time for criminal gangsters, and few were more feared, lionized, or despised than John Dillinger. The exploits of Dillinger and his gang garnered as much notoriety among the people of the Midwest as Bonnie and Clyde, until that day in Chicago in July 1935 when Dillinger himself was offed by the FBI's top man Melvin Purvis. This is the saga told and mytholigized in the 1973 cult classic DILLINGER, which marked the directing debut (albeit on a low budget courtesy of American International Pictures) of John Milius, one of Hollywood's few true political conservatives (and an old-school one at that).

As with BONNIE AND CLYDE, the 1967 Arthur Penn-directed classic that this film takes more than a few cues from, one can't expect anything remotely resembling a realistic portrait of one of America's most notorious criminals. But what Milius, a film buff par excellence, does give us in spades is an extraordinarily charismatic performance in the title role by Warren Oates, the fine charachter actor who came into his own via his appearances as part of Sam Peckinpah's stock company. Another Peckinpah regular (and John Ford stalwart), the always-reliable Ben Johnson, co-stars as his adversary, Melvin Purvis. Along for the ride are future "Dallas" star Steve Kanaly (as Pretty Boy Floyd); Richard Dreyfuss (as Baby Face Nelson); Geoffrey Lewis (as Harry Pierpont); Cloris Leachman (as the Lady In Red); Michelle Phillips, of the Mamas and the Papas (as Billy Frechette); and Harry Dean Stanton (as Homer Van Meter).

Milius and his cast, especially Oates (who looks very much like Mr. Dillinger), play the story for all its worth, mythologizing the gangster life in a time when only guns and money were involved. Yes, it can be argued that this film romanticizes Dillinger, just like Penn had done with Bonnie and Clyde (though given what we know now about Purvis' boss, J. Edgar Hoover, Dillinger seems like a nice guy by comparison). And of course, it's no surprise that when the credit "Written and directed by John Milius" comes in the opening title sequence, the background pic is of gun cartridges (this given Milius' love of weapons). But just as Penn didn't spare us any bloodshed in his 1967 masterpiece (or Peckinpah in his epic 1969 western THE WILD BUNCH), Milius doesn't spare the bloodshed here in DILLINGER either. Even though he was operating on a low budget, the shootouts are as violent and hair-raising as the 'R' rating would allow for 1973. And when it comes to that moment outside Chicago's Biograph Theatre...whoa, Nelly!

Although Milius would become more notorious for injecting right-wing polemics into his films (RED DAWN; FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR), in DILLINGER, he keeps his eyes squarely on the combination of fine acting (particularly Oates and Johnson), great period detail, and hot-wire action. And to top it all off, Oates has one of the great (and unheralded) film lines in history in his opening bank job when he tells his victims (and, by virtue, the audience): "This could be one of the big moments in your life. Don't make it your last."

It may not be BONNIE AND CLYDE, or THE WILD BUNCH (or even DePalma's SCARFACE), and it may be historically hazy, but in the end, DILLINGER is a solid gangster film on a budget that would barely pay for one big action sequence in a typical Hollywood film of today.

Dillinger, made back in 1973 here, is the Best dang Warren Oates movie of all time. Bless his heart, Oates never got the recognition he so deserved. "Dillinger"...a true, fast-paced superb depiction of infamous John Dillinger & his Gang. Do purchase.

Dillinger is a romantic vision of a tough bunch of people. Warren Oates is a vastly under-rated American actor. He delivers the goods in a recreation of the Depression Era, and a deeper examination of the popular love of crime and criminals vs the system and the fat cats. The action is graphic and sometimes hard to watch, a la Bonnie and Clyde. Ben Johnson's Melvin Purvis is a great foil for Oates' and smaller parts go to actors of the stature of Harry Dean Stanton and Richard Dreyfuss at early moments in their careers. Overall a thoroughly watchable slice of Americana a focussed lens.