Dillinger

Dillinger (1973) is John Milius's crime drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Warren Oates stars as the legendary bank robber at the center of it. The story sits in the America of the early thirties, when the Depression was squeezing ordinary people dry and a man holding up banks could pass for a hero.

The film tracks John Dillinger from brazen heists across the Midwest to the label the FBI pinned on him: the country's most wanted. On his trail is agent Melvin Purvis (Ben Johnson), bent on bringing him down whatever it costs. Along the way the gang picks up other big names of the era — Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson, the latter played by a young Richard Dreyfuss. The newspapers, meanwhile, keep dressing a killer up as a modern Robin Hood.

This was Milius's first time directing, before he wrote Apocalypse Now, and his taste for hard-edged men is already on the screen. Cloris Leachman and Harry Dean Stanton fill out the cast. One for fans of tough seventies American cinema about real outlaws, with the romance stripped away. Stream Dillinger (1973) online on iFILM.