The film is about the FBI trying to take down American gangsters John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd during the booming crime wave in the 1930’s.
The film Public Enemies, directed by Michael Mann, is a 2009 American adaptation from the book, “Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the birth of the FBI” written by Bryan Burrough, which details the demise of many notorious criminals in the 1930’s. Burrough originally intended to make a television series about the crime wave during the great depression in the United Sates, but it never transpired. Mann developed the project and some scenes were film on the actual location were certain things happened, such as the Biograph Theater where Dellinger was killed.
Many of the historical events in this film have been fictionalized, mainly the dates, but I agree with the director when he stated that otherwise it would be called a documentary and not a fictional film. There are probably many facts that are wrong in this film, but in my opinion only someone who has a vast knowledge of these events would notice.
On the film, Dillinger participates in the prison break in Indiana and helps his associates in a shootout where many officers are wounded, however in reality; Dillinger was imprisoned at the time in Lima, Ohio; and though Dillinger did help smuggle weapons into that prison, it is still unclear how it was done and only one officer was hurt at the time. The death of Pretty Boy Floyd happened three months after Dillinger’s death and not before as we see on the film, and it happened on an open field by a farmhouse and not an apple orchard. None of Dillinger’s gang members were killed during the Little Bohemia Lodge shootout, though the scene was actually film on the real Lodge and not just a set. Nelson was killed four months after Dillinger. It is also said that despite having been shot almost all over his body, Nelson, failed to fall right away and many say it was because
References: Public Enemies Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1152836/ Public Enemies (2009 film) Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Enemies_(2009_film)#Production