CHICAGO — Whether moviegoers buy Johnny Depp as John Dillinger or believe that public enemy No. 1 was actually a goodhearted bank robber remains to be seen.

But as "Public Enemies" opens this week, one thing that may help viewers travel back in time is that Depp drove the same streets, emerged from the same theater and pretended to die in the same alley where the feds plugged Dillinger full of lead more than 70 years ago.

Take a bow, Chicago.

The marquee may proclaim the film stars Depp, Christian Bale and Marion Cotillard, but the credits could just as easily included Chicago — and the Midwest in general.

Director Michael Mann said filming on location at spots like Chicago's Biograph Theater and Little Bohemia Lodge in Wisconsin, where a gun battle erupted between Dillingers' gang and the feds, were instrumental in bringing Dillinger's story to life.

"It feels like you are there now and you know what John Dillinger's feeling," said Mann.

If the scene where Dillinger realizes the FBI are outside his window at Little Bohemia looks authentic, it may be because Depp is in the same room where Dillinger stayed, laying on the same bed and even touching some of Dillinger's things in what were Dillinger's suitcases.

Bryan Burrough, the author of the book that the film was based on, was even impressed that while playing one of the movie's news reporters who rush across the street after Dillinger is shot, he was handed a notebook and mechanical pencil that he was told were from the era.

John Russick, a Chicago History Museum curator who watched the film recently at a screening in the city, said Mann captures Chicago at the time when Dillinger was a big a star here.

"I thought they did a really great job of creating a different time in Chicago, the pace of the public scenes, the look of the architecture, the way the streets were not so floodlit the way they are today," said Russick.

Russick recalls driving up Lincoln Avenue, where the Biograph Theater still stands, and being amazed at the transformation of the street, from the jalopies parked along it to the trolly line that ran down it and the stores that lined it.

"I was driving my Honda Civic, thinking the odd thing was me in my car," said Russick, who said the filmmakers studied dozens of photographs, including many of Lincoln Avenue, from the museum's archives.