| Movie DescriptionIn 1933, John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) is brought to the Indiana State Prison by his partner John "Red" Hamilton (Jason Clarke), under the guise of a prisoner drop. Dillinger and Hamilton overpower several guards and free members of their gang including Charles Makley (Christian Stolte), Homer Van Meter (Stephen Dorff), Walter Dietrich (James Russo), Ed Shouse, Jr. (Michael Vieau), and Harry Pierpont (David Wenham). The jailbreak goes off without a hitch, until Ed Shouse, Jr. beats a guard to death. A shootout ensues as the gang makes its getaway. Dietrich is killed, and a furious Dillinger kicks Shouse out of the car. The rest of the gang retreats to a farm house hideout, where crooked East Chicago, Indiana cop Martin Zarkovich (John Michael Bolger) convinces them to hide out in Chicago, where they can be sheltered by the local Mafia.
Later in East Liverpool, Ohio, Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) and several other Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and East Liverpool Cops are running down Pretty Boy Floyd (Channing Tatum). Purvis kills Floyd and is promoted by J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup), who is struggling to expand his Bureau into a national police agency, to lead the hunt for John Dillinger, declaring the first national "War on Crime." Purvis shares Hoover's belief in using scientific methods to battle crime, ranging from cataloging fingerprints to tapping telephone lines.
In between a series of bank robberies, including a violent one at The First National Bank in East Chicago, Indiana, where Dillinger kills an East Chicago cop, Dillinger meets Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard) at a restaurant and proceeds to woo her by buying her a fur coat. Frechette falls for Dillinger even after he tells her who he is, and the two quickly become inseparable.
Melvin Purvis leads a failed ambush at a hotel where he believes Dillinger is staying. An agent is shot and killed by the occupant. After the man escapes, Purvis realizes the killer wasn't Dillinger but was Baby Face Nelson and Tommy Carroll. After this incident, Purvis requests that Hoover bring in professional lawmen who know how to catch criminals dead or alive, including Texas "cowboy" Charles Winstead (Stephen Lang). |
