John Dillinger's life was written in gunfire and teletype—a rat-a-tat tapestry of mayhem that cowed and captivated a nation.
Blam! Dillinger breaks buddies out of prison! Crack! Dillinger robs bank! Kapow! Dillinger captured! Bang! Dillinger escapes using wooden gun!

His life was too outlandish to make up, too colorful to fully believe. Branded Public Enemy No. 1 by the FBI, this real-life bank robber understood the value of good public relations, and he helped craft his own story. Now, he's a stew of headlines and police blotter entries augmented with hearsay and legend, shaping him as both a vile villain and an antihero Robin Hood.

Public Enemies, the latest film to center around Dillinger, doesn't try to separate reality from fiction, but instead adds a new layer of myth and mystique—pushing enigmatic charmer Johnny Depp into the shoes of one of America's most storied bad guys.

Public Enemies opens with an audacious assault on Indiana State Prison, where Dillinger cracks out some friends who'd become part of his gang. It ends with his death, when FBI agents gun him down at the Biograph Theater in Chicago. In between we see Dillinger rob banks, shoot guns, fall in love and tangle with Melvin Purvis—the FBI agent who would eventually mastermind his downfall.

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Cold death-dealing aside, Dillinger is gallant—giving up his coat to girlfriends and hostages alike when there's a chill in the air. He's loyal—patching up partners and taking care of his girlfriend when the "smart" thing to do would be to cut and run. He even leaves a depositor's money on the counter as he takes bags and bags of cash out of a bank. "We're not here for your money," he tells the guy. "We're here for the bank's money." Of course, all of these good qualities are draped from the shoulders of a really bad dude.

Yet society loves its bad guys - the rebel, the guy who fights The Man, and we’re even willing to forgive those who break the law—as long as they do so with a tinge of morality and loads of charisma. Dillinger is portrayed in Public Enemies, at times, as a folk hero. And back then, he sort of was one. Even the FBI's own website admits as much.

"During the 1930s Depression, many Americans, nearly helpless against forces they didn't understand, made heroes of outlaws who took what they wanted at gunpoint," the site reads. "Of all the lurid desperadoes, one man, John Herbert Dillinger, came to evoke this Gangster Era, and stirred mass emotion to a degree rarely seen in this country."

I don't know what this villain affection really says about us, frankly. Maybe we, feeling helpless inside The System, sometimes like to see people break things wide open. Maybe it speaks to something darker in our souls—an outlet for our own rebellious desires. Maybe it's just because the bad guys always seem to be having more fun in the movies.

Whatever the reason, though, I think there's a particular danger in looking up to this particular bad guy. Public Enemies' John Dillinger doesn't just tap into our sense of villain envy. He encourages a sin even more quintessential: greed. "What do you want?" Billie asks Dillinger. "Everything," he responds. "Right now."

In the middle of the Great Depression, such bravado represented the height of audacity. But in the decades since Dillinger, many internalized this very message—leading to things like easy credit and subprime loans. We want everything. And we want it right now. Like Dillinger, we're paying for our materialism. But to hear an onscreen Dillinger offer up this philosophy again—a Dillinger we're encouraged, in many ways, to embrace as a stylish antihero—is a little troubling.

"It's like today, there's a recession and like now, people back then felt there was this great sense of injustice and that these fat cats were just screwing them over," Christian Bale told USA Today. "And Dillinger was somebody taking it back. It's like Dillinger was the right man at the right time and he seemed almost to have a cause."

Dillinger did indeed become a populist hero for some back then. But he was no Robin Hood, handing money to the needy and trumpeting the needs of the common man. In the film, he thinks himself an uncommonly bright man, and he spends his wealth the way any "fat cat" might—on furs, trips, women and wine.

Dillinger wasn't fighting an economic downturn. He emulated the thinking that got us there in the first place. More importantly, and more obviously, he was a liar, bank robber and killer. Those are important things to keep in mind as we sort out who our real public enemies actually are.

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