Too long and too sprawling for its own good with hand held HD digital camerawork that feels awkward in the period setting and too many underdeveloped subplots, nonetheless director Michael Mann’s biopic of John Dillinger, the notorious Depression era bank robber, jailbreaker and America’s first Public Enemy No 1, has much to recommend.

Spanning the period from 1933 as Dillinger (Johnny Depp) actually breaks into the Indiana state penitentiary to free the former cellmates who will become part of his gang to July 1934 when, following an elaborate series of law-enforcement engineered betrayals (including that of crime boss Frank Nitti), he was gunned down leaving the Chicago cinema where he’d just been watching Clark Gable in Manhattan Melodrama, Mann seeks to both indulge the cinematic romanticising of the gangster and show the darker realities behind the myth.

For the most part, he succeeds admirably while, acting with his eyes to electrifying effect, Depp giving an awards-worthy turn as the charismatic and fiercely intelligent Dillinger, a folk hero to those hit by the Depression for his targeting of the banks rather than the public but also ruthlessly cold when the situation required.

Less well served is Christian Bale who, as Melvin Purvis, the G-man who shot Pretty Boy Floyd and the dogged top agent of the fledging FBI put together by J Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup), is saddled with an intense, enigmatic but largely reactive role that never really lets you inside his head. Likewise, Marion Cottilard as Dillinger’s loyal and devoted French hat check girlfriend Billie Frechette who, while delivering a strong performance, isn’t given enough attention in the screenplay to get beneath the surface and examine her moral and emotional choices.

There’s plenty of typical Mann action with shoot-outs, chases and jailbreaks, most notably a forest cabin gunfight between Dillinger’s crew and the FBI that echoes the legendary set piece of Heat. But it’s actually in the quieter moments where the film works best, most specifically the surreal – almost otherworldly - scene where, with Purvis and his agents all out looking for him, Dillinger coolly walks into the police station operations room, looks around and even engages those still there in a conversation about the big game.

With a cast list that also includes Channing Tatum’s brief cameo as Pretty Boy Floyd and David Wenham, Stephen Dorff, Giovanni Ribisi and Stephen Graham as, respectively, Dillinger gang members, Harry Pierpoint, Homer Van Meter, Alvin Karpis and the sociopathic Baby Face Nelson, the film keeps the suspense ratcheted through to Dillinger’s whispered last words.

Ultimately, in terms of the century’s gangster sagas to date, it comes in third behind Jean-Francois Richet’s magnificent Mesrine two parter, Killer Instinct and Public Enemy No 1, and time alone will tell if it eventually achieves the same status of similar period crime classics like The Untouchables, Bonnie & Clyde, and White Heat, but as bullets for your bucks go it’s got a very well stocked magazine.

Bonus features include a making of, profiles of Dillinger and Purvis, and features on Dillinger and the real locations.