It’s tough to watch Johnny Depp these days when he’s not wearing eyeliner, a do-rag and a monkey on his shoulder. After gooping up Finding Neverland, glowering vacantly through Sweeney Todd and annihilating every sprinkle of dignity in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, how can he be trusted with another larger-than-life character defined by a complicated past?

Universal Studios

Johnny Depp stars as legendary Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger, whose lightning raids made him the No. 1 target of J. Edgar Hoover’s fledgling FBI, in Public Enemies.

View larger More photos Photo store

Depp dials down his weirdness to play gangster John Dillinger and, ironically, this choice sinks the movie. Public Enemies, despite packing thunderous rounds of ammunition, is a touch too remote. There are no big speeches, no drawn-out death scenes, no gauzy flashbacks. It’s a straight-faced, no-nonsense, shoot-’em-up kind of movie.

It’s also a double-barreled bummer. There’s no excitement in the bank-robbing, no thrill of the chase, no emotion over justice served or thwarted. Depp’s Dillinger is neither charming nor despicable, nor does he occupy that delicious gray area between the two. His spree unspools dispassionately, cold as a Colt .380.

Under the stewardship of J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup, who seems to act mostly with jowls he doesn’t have), the FBI strikes back at Dillinger. Leading the manhunt is stone-faced agent Melvin Purvis, played by Christian Bale with an introversion even more pathological than Bruce Wayne’s.

The movie is a tussle of dark suits and fedoras, with packs of trigger-happy men perforating the dickens out of the Midwest under a Hoover-mandated “national war on crime.” Director Michael Mann and cinematographer Dante Spinotti keep the camera at the actors’ shoulders, holding the action in tight close-ups, rarely stepping back for a wider look.

The problem is casting. Depp and Bale blow each other’s circuits. There’s no electricity to the rivalry because it’s impossible to get a read on either man.

The movie’s faint pulse comes from French actress Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose), who plays Dillinger’s girlfriend, Billie Frechette, a coat-check girl whose life changes forever when she agrees to an impromptu date. Cotillard has a particularly affecting scene in which she is brutally interrogated by overzealous agents. It’s here that Public Enemies gets closest to a theme that resounds in the heart and the head.

Cotillard is a tightly wound bundle of nerves in a movie that is otherwise unfeeling. Opposite her, Depp’s brand of brooding wilts; he coasts solely on his pout, his dark brown eyes and his relentless inscrutability.

The story reaches its inevitable end outside the Biograph Theater, where Purvis and his agents wait in ambush. There’s nothing to feel once Dillinger hits the pavement, but Public Enemies almost rights itself by checking in with Billie before the credits roll. If the fire in Cotillard’s eyes in this final scene had been matched by Depp and Bale throughout, Public Enemies might’ve really popped. Instead, its chamber is empty. For 2 hours, 20 minutes, it simply goes click, click, click.

Public Enemies

** 1/2

Rated R, 140 minutes.

Opens Friday.