Crime Wave: 18 Months of Mayhem

THE FLICK
For a year and a half, the America was hit not only by the Great Depression, massive unemployment, foreclosures and the loss of swaths of farmland to the Dust Bowl, but also by a group of gangsters who terrorized banks in the Midwest.  From Michigan to Arkansas to Texas and even Arizona, five prolific outlaws shot and robbed their way into the American mainstream.  Though Crime Wave: 18 Months of Mayhem largely tells the story of John Dillinger, the 90-minute documentary from History also mentions his contemporaries, such as Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson and Machine Gun Kelly.  Seen as heroes by the out-of-work populace and a national menace by the government, this group led to the formation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the first national law enforcement organization.  Through interviews, reenactments and newsreel footage, Crime Wave tries to be both entertaining and educational, mildly succeeding on the first count while being more successful on the second.

The chief problem with the entertainment aspect is Crime Wave debuts on DVD to coincide with Michael Mann's Public Enemies, the big screen adaptation of the Dillinger story with Johnny Depp and Christian Bale.  For audiences who have seen that picture, there's little History could add to the discussion in any way, shape or form.  Because the actors portraying the outlaws don't speak, there's no sense of their personality outside of what the narrator tells the audience.  Dillinger cracked jokes; Depp, as Dillinger, actually does this with the journalists and law enforcement officers surrounding him.  We're told FBI agent Melvin Purvis is hounded by J. Edgar Hoover to reign in the lawlessness; Bale and the chief (Billy Crudup) verbally spar more than once, fleshing out the relationship.  It may be unfair to ask a cable documentary to compete with a feature length film released two years later, but that's the unfortunate place Crime Wave finds itself.  Could it have overcome this disadvantage?  Realistically, no, at least not without speculating on parts of the Dillinger story.

And that's what this piece does so well: sticks to the overall story in a chronological fashion, starting in June, 1933, and running through Dillinger's death in July, 1934.  For example, a map of the midwest fills the TV screen with red dots indicating where this group committed a robbery or other criminal infraction.  Then, details of the incident are detailed on the screen.  Occasionally, the narrative shifts to Washington, D.C., and the still-forming FBI or information on the Great Depression.  There are also very brief asides used to describe some of the weaponry or vehicles used on all sides, like the Thompson submachine gun (aka the tommy gun).  In this sense, Crime Wave presents its information in an educational fashion, without much pomp or flash.  The reenactments don't try to put words into the people's mouths; they are also shot in such a way as to obscure the actor's faces to a large extent.  This tactic makes sense, in the long run, on a cable budget.  Putting an actor up against mugshots will hammer home the point the action isn't real.  By not focusing on the faces, Crime Wave sidesteps this potential problem.

Make no mistake: this program purports to be about the "mayhem" brought on by numerous bank robbers and misfits.  It does venture into talk about a couple other notable names, though the main focus is on Dillinger.  Through numerous jail escapes, near captures by law enforcement and various shoot-outs, he became a media celebrity (as did his contemporaries).  Scholars attribute their popularity in the mainstream to wish fulfillment of sorts.  With over 200 farm foreclosures per week in Oklahoma alone, the Depression wiped out the savings of most families, leading to the people blaming the banks for their lot in life.  Dillinger was seen as someone who was doing what they could not.  Ironically, it is mentioned robbing banks was not the best way to "make" money in the time period.  Small town banks were hit especially hard by a loss of public confidence; they were also the easiest targets...but also had relatively small jackpots.  Kidnapping was more lucrative, considering the lack of a national task force and the practice of paying the ransom then trying to track it down.

While Crime Wave can be somewhat forgiven for glossing over Bonnie and Clyde and the others (the criminal duo, after all, have been immortalized of film and on History before), there is no excuse for fumbling the FBI story as badly as it does.  Allowances should and can be made for a too short running time to pack in all the intended information, though a key part of the story is how blatantly incompetent law enforcement was at nearly every single step of the way.  The narrator does mention jurisdiction ending at county lines or the inability of officials to get the resources the outlaws had.  How did Hoover change the perception of the organization, for example, in the eyes of the public?  What was the reaction to two young agents driving right past Dillinger?  How about more on the St. Paul safe haven for bank robbers?  Crime Wave tries to mention everything in relation to this time in American history certain fascinating pieces are largely left unexplored.

As much as the doc wants to hammer home the point of a literal crime wave across the center of the country-and does-there comes a point when one robbery or gun battle looks and feels like all the others.  Crime Wave doesn't do a whole lot to distinguish one event from another.  The same map animation introduces each while the same reenactments and interview subjects comment on them.  Maybe this is where having the actors speak would have helped, in hindsight.  And maybe the narrative needed to make a bigger deal of the small details, like Dillinger not being a violent man, to distinguish one holdup from another. 

THE LOOK
The main feature is presented in non-anamorphic widescreen, meaning black bars are on all sides of the image when viewed on an HD display.  And while this may seem to be a problem on first glance, it's really not in the long run.  True, Crime Wave was produced in 2007 and television content was in the format at the time.  However, since most of the doc relies on newsreel footage-all in 1.33:1 fullscreen format-the rest of the program had to follow suit.

Original interviews with authors and FBI agents are pleasant looking, though hardly groundbreaking.  The limited color palette is rendered without much of a problem in these segments.  Even the reenactment footage, mostly shrouded in semi-darkness, is presentable; details are hard to see strictly due to the lack of light in most of the scenes.  What stands out the most are the tommy gun (aka Thompson submachine gun) blasts at the Little Bohemia Lodge, with mini-explosions standing in stark contrast to the black forest.  This effect, most likely done purposely, lends a certain air of mystery to the segments.  Newsreel footage is, predictably, all over the map.  None of it looks spectacular, with wear lines running in both directions, a distinct lack of detail and some grain. 

THE SOUND
The English 2.0 mix is serviceable enough with clear dialogue being the most important part of the track.  Even when the source material is filled with pops and scratches, the separate elements of the track don't run the risk of obscuring one another.  There are bursts of deep bass from shootouts, though they are few and far between.  To its credit, no distortion is present when the soundtrack hits the high or the low side of the spectrum.  In the end, there's not a lot to say about the audio precisely because it is exactly what one would expect from a History documentary.  It presents the information without issue, but doesn't try to be anything else.  No subtitles are included. 

THE STUFF
Packed in a black keepcase without an insert, Crime Wave is broken down into 10 chapters.  From the main menu, there is a choice to watch either Crime Wave or a "bonus" program titled Love and Death: The Story of Bonnie and Clyde.  (A selection of chapters for the selected program come up after clicking on one of them.)  Running 43-minutes with 5 chapters, Love and Death doesn't really bother with the crime history of the duo, opting instead to focus on the romance they shared.  Combining vintage reenactment footage, still photos and new interviews (from 1997), the piece is overly schmaltzy, as evidenced by actors reading letters the two shared to expand the story.  In essence, they had a great love and Bonnie knew they'd die in a hail of gunfire.  Love and Death's inclusion is a good way for History to get more of their programming on disc and the content seems to compliment Crime Wave but they're bound to appeal to different audiences.