I always did consider Depp over-rated as a serious actor. In cases like this a director is generally better off going with a talented unknown . . . somebody HUNGRY for success and therefore someone willing to take acting direction.

Such an actor probably wouldn't have the polish of a Johnny Depp but then when you are playing a ruthless gangster you DON'T WANT all that much in the way of polish from your actor. You want more than a hint of rough.

I wasn't fond of John Milius' film Dillinger, but in Warren Oates, he had the perfect actor for the role--Oates could almost have been Dillinger's twin brother, and he got the small-town goof-off charm of the fellow, and the moral rot underneath it (in fact, Dillinger wasn't really all that menacing or violent--he only killed on cop in his entire career, and that was an accident--the gun battles with the cops were mostly draws, and Dillinger was smart enough, unlike Bonnie and Clyde, not to back himself into corners he would have to shoot his way out of).

My other problem with this film is that if there was a real center to Burroughs' book, it was Alvin Karpis, the unspoken head of the Barker Gang (the Barker brothers were virtually brain dead, and their mother was even worse). Like Dillinger, he wasn't all that violent and he was very smart, and unlike almost everybody else in this story, he outlived the whole era, not to mention J. Edgar Hoover . . .