"Dillinger is about movies, more than it's a reliable portrait of gangsters in the early 1930s. When it tells us, finally, that an elderly Melvin Purvis shot himself with the very gun he used to dispose of Dillinger, this is less history's lesson than a way of saying that Ben Johnson and Warren Oates could have swapped parts. They had an act together, coming on fame from different but exchangeable directions. Dillinger assembles a gang in the way a director might hire himself most of the best supporting actors in town. Therefore, there is no strenuous attempt to condemn or praise: this America honors guns, money and celebrity. Purvis and Dillinger are alike--twins nearly, Smiley and Grumpy--in that they would like to live forever, become legends. The ritual life of cars, hold-ups, being on the run, equipped with hats, booze and dames, is a series of acts or routines, engraved in our minds by the movies, and forever the dream of character actors. Broad, sensational, hopeless and trashy, the gangster life is the supporting actor's undying and forlorn hope of being a star himself. Dillinger has no 'stars', but it brings together a trinity of supporting actors from the 1970s--Johnson, Oates and Stanton (they sound like an old, established firm of lawyers). These are men who make us sigh with relief and anticipation--for as soon as they appear we know a scene's going to be OK. They are the scene, as trusty as props, trees and daylight." David Thomson