Cinema File: 'Public Enemies' seriously misfires

"Fight Club" author Chuck Palahniuk once responded to a critic's harsh words by saying, "Until you can create something that captivates people, I'd invite you to just shut up. It's easy to attack and destroy an act of creation. It's a lot more difficult to perform one."

I completely agree with him. At the end of all my Cinema File columns, it says that I'm also a filmmaker, which is something I felt readers needed to know about me. I don't see myself as a movie critic, but rather a fan and vocal supporter of film in the purest sense.

Unfortunately, there are times when my creative experience causes me to look at certain movies differently than perhaps most people would, and I'm positive I'd have enjoyed the film more were this not the case.

As with the overhyped "Cloverfield," any movie that either involves shooting on digital video, or was itself filmed using that type of camera, automatically goes under my microscope, because that's the same thing I and most modern low-budget crews do our thing with. If a movie is great, you won't notice or care what it was shot on. But if the medium calls enough attention to itself, that's a problem, and "Public Enemies" suffers greatly as a result of this.

Director Michael Mann isn't the only big-name director to employ digital cameras for his features. Sidney Lumet, whose credits include such classics as the original "12 Angry Men" and "Network," made 2007's award-winning "Before The Devil Knows You're Dead" using high-definition video, and you can't tell because the entire picture was lit and photographed the same way it would have been if they'd used 35mm film cameras.

For his 2004 release, "Collateral," Mann shot half on digital and half on film, and everything blended together well, but the main point is that you'd never know it because it's a flat-out good movie.

"Public Enemies," which takes place in 1933, is filmed like some kind of modern-day, prime-time cop show. Lines are spoken, sometimes mumbled, and in the opening sequence, it was difficult for me even to understand what was being said by the actors.

I understood right away that Mann wanted the audience to feel like we were "really there," like right in the middle of what was goin