Miami Melodrama (Near Bernay’s Cafe)

Mann deals, as melodramas often will, in the realm of the concept: as much as story may matter, story is more a means than an end, which makes the rather straightforward narrative structure of PUBLIC ENEMIES that much less engaging—though more present—when the film’s image is reduced to what I am tempted to call a naive assimilation of the real. Mann loves myth, and myth exceeds the ordinary.

–R. W. Knight, theauteurs