Summer Arts Preview

In Theaters July 1

In the 1930s America was in the dumps, but gangsters — and gangster movies — were in the chips. As the country tries to sidestep another Great Depression, director Michael Mann recalls some of the thugs for whom being on the FBI's Most Wanted List was like winning American Idol. Mann sets G-Man Christian Bale on the trail of three of the decade's most notorious bad guys: John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), Pretty Boy Floyd (Channing Tatum) and Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham). Mann knows crime: he did Thief and Heat as movies, Crime Story as a TV series and Miami Vice as both. This is his first period crime film — wait, given Mann's power-driving style, make that exclamation-point crime film.

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