When Newsweek's reviewer lamented, "John Milius sees Dillinger precisely the way we did when we were 7, which is fine when you are 7," he was not far off. Nor when he said, "His tribute to Dilliinger in fact reduces this mythological figure to the size of a pistol-packing pygmy. Milius' public enemy and his gun-slinging pals are acting out a kids' game -- a rat-tat-tat tribute to retarded development." Milius' Dillinger is a film about the making of a man into a myth. A society reduced to a state of economic despair (and retarded development), a robber obsessed with his media image, and a cop drived to the prize game, all work together to create the myth. Milius sets his story with a montage of newsreel footage and photos from the 30s. Between his two antagonists, Dillinger and Melvin Purvis, the "G-man" who shot him down at the movies (watching Manhattan Melodrama), there is the link that acts as a mirror, the common bond of being two halves of the same legend. (When he shot himself in 1961, Melvin Purvis did it with the gun he used to kill the Public Enemy.)
Dillinger packs a lot of violence. But Lynda Myles and Michael Pye point out, "The surprising quality of Dillinger is its warmth. In its rural scenes there are echoes of the humanistic feeling of John Ford, a favorite director of Milius,...underlin(ing) a sense of community from which the Dillinger gang excludes itself by crime. Away from the gunsmoke Milius shows an ability to conjure lyrical images of America." (in "The Movie Brats")