Given the opportunity to make a top or a list of films is always something I jump on head first. Since Mann is the Director of the month at the LAMB I’ve decided to make a little late contribution of my own. This is a modest top since of the 10 films directed by Michael Mann, I’ve only seen 4. But, you know there’s always a but, it will be a great pretext to catch the six omissions listed below. As always comments are welcomed and I encourage you to make your own top and recommend me one of the films I haven’t seen from Mann.
Recently reviewed on Le Mot du Cinephiliaque, Michael Mann's Miami Vice was a precedent to this review of his film of last year: Public Enemies. I'll try not to repeat myself on some of the qualities of Mann's films, I promess. My expectations for Public Enemies were really high, first because like John Dillinger I love Gangster films. Second, because Michael Mann's pictures are always as entertaining as cinematically great. Third, because it's Johnny Depp and Christian Bale two of my favorite actors around. I liked Bale since American Psycho and Depp well since Edward Scissorhands.
The last years of the life of the famous bank robber John Dillinger(Johnny Depp), his love interest Billie Frechette(Marion Cottillard) and the man who chased him, Melvin Purvis(Christian Bale) are the subjects of Public Enemies.
Besides being the classic hide and seek chase movie, Public Enemies revisits the classic Gangster genre. Well, Michael Mann's films have this quality that I ultimely respect from a filmmaker which is to make a personal film that will make money, satisfy the critics and have its unique approach. He never makes a movie where the viewer is despised or out of its "comfort zone". The themes he visits are classics; love, duty, passion, obsession, etc. I know I'll receive tomatoes and stuff but I'd like to make a comparison of Michael Mann with one of the greatest directors of all-time: Howard Hawks. Hawks always had his style, his own way to tell a story. He did it in the "classic" cinematic genres too like Westerns, Film Noir, Slapstick, Comedies and Hawks always managed to have commercial success with his films. Well, I think Mann is the same kind of filmmaker mastering within the boundaries of successful movie business.
Another interesting topic about Mann's moviemaking is how his action scenes are efficient for the viewer. They never fell forced or useless but their major appeal is how they feel true. Linked with the action scenes are the scenes that leads to the action and that's what Mann is truly a master at. There are not that many shootings in Public Enemies, because Mann takes all his time to develop the motivations of the characters. Some frames are unusual but they don't feel arty just to be "cool" he doesn't have an exuberant style like Quentin Tarantino or Wes Anderson, but his sober "mise en scène" and deep realism that caracterize his filmmaking keeps the focus of the audience on the main elements of the movie: the characters, the story, and the dialogues.
If you haven't seen the feature I must warn you that the next section contains spoilers.
The whole film is a strong piece of Cinema. But to me, the final 30 minutes or so of the movie are just sublime. The scene where Dillinger enters in the Police station in the Dillinger squad room and looks at all the pictures and stuff about him. A place where every policeman must have dreamt to know where he is hidden and to catch the guy that is just standing there and asking for the score of the game. This is a blissful moment of Cinema. Moreover, the scene that comes after this, where Dillinger is at the movies and watches a Clark Gable picture titled Manhattan Melodrama he sees what could have been a different (happy?) ending for him. It's a fact that John Dillinger was a movie buff. The scene is not that long but its execution and the build up of the tension is just perfect. We all know how it's gonna end but just don't know exactly when, the wait is endless.
Few films have this mastery to achieve to execute a powerful effect of the "film in the film" like that and in Public Enemies it's just excellent.
Very underrated when it came out, this adaptation to the big screen of one of the most successful television series of the 1980's; Miami Vice disappointed many moviegoers that waited for a Lethal Weapon kinda crime/comedy movie. The comedic side is never exploited in this Michael Mann film. It may be one of the precursors of the return to the 80's of the end of the last decade. In fashion, style and culture this comeback to the years when my generation was born is something more close to commercial nostalgia than simple return to basics. The 80's were a decade where "more is more" paraphrasing Mies Van Der Rohe's "Less is More". Mann's Miami Vice is an underrated masterpiece like William Friedkin's underrated To Live and Die in L.A. and you know what? this last one was made in the 80's!!!
Miami Vice is the classic cop story where two partners are going undercover in the drug dealing underworld to find the bad guys who killed their partner. At this point there's nothing really new, but as long as the story goes the multi layered plot of these two cops/friends just got better and better. Mann wants us to pay attention to every detail of the film: the many eyes we can see on posters, graffitis, paintings and the recurring thunders in the sky at crucial moments of the movie everything is precisely put in place for a reason.
The styled and uncluttered cinematography lighted with crude and natural light gives a sense of reality to the images of the film and to the choices of unusual frames that gives a subtil artistic touch to the simplistic yet modern sets.
Brilliantly cast with a strong as always Jamie Foxx and the sometimes categorized as uneven Colin Farrel that gives one of his best nuanced performances in Miami Vice. Like the story, their characters are strong and multi layered in emotions. Their friendship is unshakable and even when literally sleeping with the devil they stand together.
Of being one of the commercial flops of the summer of 2006 Miami Vice stands strong and may be one of the center movies of Michael Mann's filmography with Heat, Collateral and The Insider. This is the kind of film I can watch again and again for its interesting story as for its filmic qualities.
