"Dillinger" is one of the best films from Warren Oates. He is better known as a character actor, supporting player and a fine one at that. Occasionally, he was given the lead. The film has great action and Warren Oates bears a striking resemblance to the real life bandit, John Dillinger. Ben Johnson is terrific as the F.B.I agent who is on Dillinger's trail. A minor classic.

While it falls short of real greatness by an inch here and a mile there, John Milius' debut film "Dillinger" is a nasty treat, packed with a Peckinpah-ish cast headed by Warren Oates and Ben Johnson, with Harry Dean Stanton, Michelle Phillips and Richard Dreyfuss in strong support. While dialog is often rough and cartoonish -- you can almost feel Milius' strain as he attempts to write dialog that is both romantic and cynical for the love scenes between Oates and Phillips -- the action scenes are top notch in both staging and execution. The cinematography is crisp and just lightly overstated, Milius' direction is assured if never subtle, and the performances rise well above the script.Although it's a rare pleasure to see the incomparable Warren Oates in a leading role, this film is not as rewarding in that sense as Peckinpah's "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" from the following year. There's a feeling that Oates and Milius are a bit too concerned with making Dillinger a macho badass, although they do a good job of showing how his farmboy roots shine through. A few too many scenes verge on hero-worship. As good as Oates is, I thought Ben Johnson was perhaps even more impressive, particularly since he's been cast here well outside of his normal comfort zone. He's very impressive, for example, in a brief scene where he connects with a young boy who idolizes Dillinger and admits he "wouldn't wanna be a G-man." Chinatown, it is not. Milius stages mythology in an impressive manner but with no subtlety and very little flair. The film does have a special sort of quality about it, but we don't feel the exhilaration that a good bank-robbing movie should impart. There's too much focus on the Phillips/Oates relationship, which begins with a beating, rape, and kidnapping and suddenly veers into romance. It's all very confusing and feels, like much else in this film, like a attempt to "top" the earlier "Bonnie and Clyde" (dismissed in the film as "amateurs").

The 1973 film version of the (criminal) life of notorious bank robber John Dillinger, not really a remake of the 1945 film of the same title but a re-imagining of its eponymous character's career in crime, is hugely entertaining, featuring a star turn performance from Warren Oates that shows that the actor had major star potential, hampered, sadly, by his short stature, which doesn't really figure in the film as its director, John Milius, manages somehow to make Oates look taller than he was.Allegedly made on the cheap by American-International, it doesn't look cheap to me. It has, in its modest way, a kind of epic sweep, as we see Dillinger and his gang move through the Midwest like a tornado. The supporting roles are mostly played by young, at the time unknown players, one of which, Richard Dreyfuss, strangely well cast as Baby Face Nelson, went on to a starring career. As Dillinger's squeeze, Michelle Phillips is surprisingly effective and very sexy. There's good work, too, from Steve Kanaly and, especially, Harry Dean Stanton, who plays the most likable of the Dillinger gang.A problem I have with the film, and it's a fairly big one, is Ben Johnson's performance as FBI man Melvin Purvis. A former stunt man, Johnson became an accomplished player in western films, had a fine, mellow voice and a pleasing presence. He was not, however, a versatile actor, and this hurts Dillinger, as Johnson has the second biggest part in the film, and director Milius seems to favor him. Johnson looks his age, well past fifty at the time, and doesn't strike me as trim enough to be an FBI man. But if he was otherwise good casting this could be overlooked. Johnson simply lacks the authority, the heroic presence, to be Dillinger's nemesis, especially Dillinger as electrifying played by Warren Oates. Johnson was an actor who could steal scenes from major stars, hold his own with the best of them; and yet when "handed" scene after scene in Dillinger he just doesn't measure up. Worse, he often comes off as smug when what he should really be conveying is confidence, competence at what he does.With better casting in the Purvis role this Dillinger might have been a classic. As it is, it's excellent. The action scenes are done to perfection, nearly choreographed, I suspect, and yet they feel real none the less. There isn't a wasted moment in the film. Indeed, it could have been longer and worked just as well, maybe even better. The characters could have been more fleshed out; and some sections in the film, the one in the gang's Little Bohemia retreat in particular, could, with more time, greatly enhanced this already very well made film. John Milius was on a roll when he made this one, never fulfilled his potential. I wonder what went wrong.

This is still the definitive biography of John Dillinger on film. I just saw Mann's Public Enemies - this film blows that one away. Forgive me for quoting my own review of Mann's film: "Milius, taking his cue from "Bonnie And Clyde," from the earlier Lawrence Tierney film "Dillinger," and from the gaudy gangster films of Roger Corman, fashioned a film that was both flashy yet homespun, part unabashed B-movie, part evocation of American Gothic. Even his occasional tinkering with historical accuracy could be forgiven, since it was clear he had a firm grasp on what the Dillinger phenomenon was really all about - 'farm boy makes good by turning bad' is an undeniable folk-theme of American life. And the brilliance of Warren Oates' performance in the Milius film is that Oates plays Dillinger like a runaway farm-boy with a sense of humor and a quick temper, who just happened to rob banks for a living. That's as much as you can give any professional criminal without lying about the nature of crime namely, it's about stealing other peoples' money and hurting many of them in the process." Other reviewers have remarked this as a B-movie - but it is intentionally so, it never makes any pretense otherwise; and that's important: having decided to make a B-movie leaves Milius with considerable leeway as to how far he wants to push any aspect of the material. So while it's hard to think of any particular dramatic high-point of the film (perhaps the scene where Dillinger and Purvis go to the same restaurant, or the death of Pretty Boy Floyd?), it's much harder to find any moment that really drags the film down - the pacing of the film is that of a B-movie, it moves! There's nothing exceptional about the cinematography or music, or production design; what we're left with are memorable performances by some of the greatest character actors in cinema at the time, and an exciting story with enough savvy to trigger our emotions.Milius watched the Lawrence Tierney "Dillinger" and learned from it before starting this film; Mann should have watched Milius' film over and over before starting "Public Enemies." In any event, this is still THE Dillinger story, and and an entertaining action film as well.