It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Lawrence Tierney plays Dillinger, who was America's Public Enemy Number One for a short while in the 1930s. His crime spree is documented in the film along with his demise.The film is short and rolls along as a series of events and that is possibly its downfall. If it was a longer film, we may have got more depth in terms of character study and possibly had more time with some of the other characters. As it goes, the film is OK, there are good scenes and Tierney pulls off a menacing portrayal of a threatening gangster, whether it is a true depiction or not.Films like this make me go onto Wikipedia and read up about the characters – always a great past-time for afterwards.

****SPOILERS**** With the movie over and lights on and curtain coming down we see this decrypted and grizzly looking old man step on the stage to give us the in-side info about the movie "Dillinger" that we just witnessed. The old guy turns out to be Pa Dillinger, Victor Kilon, the father of the person the movie is all about gangster John Dillinger,Lawrence Tierney, who gives us the audience the true story about his son John the most wanted man, by the police, in America in the mid-1930's who's still a legend in the world of crime today.A bit overdone in Dillinger murdering a number of people, in real life he only killed one, but still very accurate film about his exploits in crime committed with his forming the "Dillinger Gang" that terrorized the mid-west from 1933-34 robbing about a dozen banks as well as, I kid you not, two police stations. That's until it, the crime spree, finally came to an end in urban Chicago with Dillinger, the last surviving gang member, shot down by the FBI and local police leaving the Biograph Theater after watching the movie "Manhattan Melodrama". It turned out that the woman he took out for his last date the "Woman in Red", Ann Jeffrey, was the one who set Dillinger up for the kill.Were shown Dillinger's career in crime as a young man who first gets busted for a $7.20 stick up of a grocery store who later became involved with his cell mate Specs Green, Edmund Lowe, to form the notorious Spec Gang that terrorized mid-west banks and brokerage houses at the height of the great depression. Feeling that Spec is not tough enough like he is Dillinger later took over the gang-After dispatching Spec- and did things or robberies his way. Caught and later after escaping from prison with a hand made wooden gun Dillinger continued his reign of terror until the law caught up with him in Chicago where he was on the lamb from the law for some 10 months. And ironical it was Dillingers only weakness,a beautiful woman, that in the end ended up doing him.P.S According to the movie the only thing of value besides his .380 automatic the FBI & police found on the dead John John Dillinger was the $7.20 that he still had, as a memento I guess, in his pocket from his first robbery.

I am not saying that "Dillinger" is a brilliant or must-see film, but it definitely was unusual for 1945 and way ahead of its time. In addition, I was completely amazed that such a production could come from crappy old Monogram Studios. You just don't expect such a well-crafted film from such a lowly production company.Before I go on, I should point out a major problem with the film. Although it's supposed to be the story of the most-wanted bank robber, John Dillinger, the filmmakers did very little to get the facts right. In general, it is his life--but only in general. The early portion of his life before he went to prison was totally wrong and it only got a bit better as the film progressed.How, then, can I give an inaccurate film an 8--especially when I normally jump all over films because of historical inaccuracy? Well, it's because the film lacked the sentimentality and clichés you normally saw in films of the day. Instead, it's direct, blunt and a bit cruel for 1945. Now it is NOT an ultra-violent film in the style of "Bonny and Clyde"--it always seems to pull away from the most violent scenes when something REALLY violent is about to occur. But the film is still pretty brutal for its day and entertaining--and a nice bit of film noir. Lawrence Tierney did a great job in playing the lead so coldly and the script, while inaccurate, was great. I just didn't understand why the film LOOKED like 1945--especially when Dillinger died in 1934. I assume it was simply because cheap old Monogram didn't want to pay to get the look just right.By the way, near the end of the film you get a VERY brief look at Santa's face. What is with him?! He looks like Leatherface or something!!

Dillinger (1945) *** (out of 4) Incredibly fast moving Monogram flick tells the story of John Dillinger (Lawrence Tierney) who rises to the top only to fall to the bottom again. The main thing here is the performance from Tierney who really captures that bad guy image. He doesn't play it as one of those funny guy roles but instead he plays it for a mean s.o.b. and he nails every single second of the film. The direction is nice throughout and there's some good style even with the low budget. Low budget filmmakers should certainly watch this just to see what you can do with a small budget. The final ten minutes really don't work too well but everything else is pretty good.