Public Enemies/YMMV
- Complete Monster: Baby-Face Nelson, both in the movie and in real life.
- Crowning Music of Awesome: "Ten Million Slaves" by Otis Taylor, used in the trailer and two different scenes in the movie itself (Purvis chasing down Pretty Boy Floyd and during Dillinger's second bank robbery).
- Ensemble Darkhorse: Billy Crudup's performance as J. Edgar Hoover was praised even by people who didn't like the movie.
- Hollywood Homely: Billie's alleged "$3 dress" (around $50, adjusted for inflation) doesn't exactly look cheap by today's standards.
- Magnificent Bastard: John Dillinger.
- Role Association: Captain Jack Sparrow is out there robbing banks and it's up to Batman to stop him! Ironically, Christian Bale and Johnny Depp are much better known than most of the other actors.
- Tear Jerker: the ending is surprisingly good at making you forget that Dillinger was in fact a ruthless gangster that regularly killed innocent people. However, Dillinger's death scene is also surprisingly accurate.
- Except he didn't. In truth Dillinger was a blue-collar crook who planned his robberies around not killing people. The only time he ever killed someone was on January 15, 1934 when he accidentally lost his temper during a bank robbery in East Chicago, Indiana and gunned down a police officer named William O'Malley. Since he never was convicted, whether Dillinger was the robber who gunned down O'Malley is sometimes questioned.
- He was in it for the money, the thrill, and as revenge against a corrupt system he felt betrayed the common man like himself. Dillinger despised cold-blooded killers like Bonnie and Clyde and Baby Face Nelson because he was wise enough to know that he was a Villain Protagonist and the people coming after him were just doing their jobs.
- Dillinger hated that he had been forced to work with a murderous bastard like Nelson later in his career, and never bothered to try and hide it. He even threatened to kill Nelson himself if he shot at anyone needlessly. This once happened when Nelson wounded a deaf man during a bank robbery in Mason City, Iowa. The resentment was mutual: Nelson hated the fact that Dillinger got all the attention, and how the press were drooling all over him (Dillinger's exploits were popping up in every major newspaper across the country; the papers were so obsessed with Dillinger that every reported sighting was grounds for a new front page article, quite a contrast to Bonnie and Clyde, who were mostly famous posthumously).
- But the film version was a ruthless gangster who killed innocent people.
- Except he didn't. In truth Dillinger was a blue-collar crook who planned his robberies around not killing people. The only time he ever killed someone was on January 15, 1934 when he accidentally lost his temper during a bank robbery in East Chicago, Indiana and gunned down a police officer named William O'Malley. Since he never was convicted, whether Dillinger was the robber who gunned down O'Malley is sometimes questioned.
- Technology Marches On: Watch this film, then try to imagine how things would turn out if the police had radios, cell phones, radar, helicopters, K9 dogs, etc.
- Values Dissonance: It's the 30s, natch.