In short: Collateral (2004)

If nothing else, this Michael Mann joint about a taxi driver (Jamie Foxx) becoming the unwilling chauffeur and unlikely fall guy for a professional killer (Tom Cruise) on a five stop murder tour of police informers through LA does prove that good direction and excellent acting is absolutely all that is needed to turn a bizarre, overconstructed and deeply implausible script into a highly engaging movie.

The film’s plot is a melange of improbable happenstance and stupid plans by supposed “professionals” that would make quite a few giallos look completely realistic. However, as with the giallo, realism and believability really aren’t the point here. Instead, Mann creates a world out of his patented amassing of plausible feeling details (which are often total hogwash in actual reality, but no matter) and a visual style that goes all in for a very digital look when that wasn’t a thing most serious directors who could afford any better tried, where all the theoretical nonsense makes total emotional and thematic sense in practice. Because it’s all in a day’s work for Mann even on a bad day, he squeezes in quite a few fantastic action and suspense scenes into the cracks of his the tale of a man losing all of his illusions and finding strength through it, starring Los Angeles by night as the perfect metaphor for the modern world. Going by the critical consensus of the time, he also made pretty much everyone watching happy with it.

While Mann is working his magic, he not only gets the expectedly great performances out of Foxx, Jada Pinkett Smith and Mark Ruffalo (doing the most Michael Mann movie cop character imaginable), but also a less awkward performance out of Cruise than most directors get when asking him to act instead of to star. In these cases, the problem usually isn’t that Cruise isn’t trying but that he’s trying so visibly to rise to the occasion, ironically seeming to lack the self-confidence to really be in the role instead of playing it. Here, there’s still a bit of the stiffness this often produces, but there are many scenes where Cruise actually nails the character in a natural and fluent way.

Three Films Make A Post: The struggle is real.

Witches in the Woods (2019): I can appreciate that this film directed by Jordan Barker does try to use the metaphorical power of witch lore to explore very contemporary ideas about feminism (really, the #metoo movement in this case), class, and race. Unfortunately, the idea is much better than the execution, for Christopher Borelli’s script is about as good at actually writing the characters involved and their relations as the scripts of 80s slasher movies were. Believing that these specific people are supposed to end up in the same SUV looking for hot snowboarding action and have ever been friends is honestly a bridge too much to cross for my ability to believe any damn nonsense a movie tries to sell me. Making matters worse is of course that an 80s slasher could easily get away with this sort of thing because the characters were not really what those films were about.

This one, on the other hand, is supposed to be about the social and the psychological, so not delivering on these things marks complete failure. Even ignoring this, the film’s horror stylings are bland and conventional, and there’s nothing to see here but some pretty young things who probably deserved to be in a better movie.

Tone-Deaf (2019): Keeping with films I didn’t enjoy at all, here’s Richard Bates Jr.’s movie about an intolerably annoying young woman (Amanda Crew) renting a house in the country for a weekend to get over her life being crap and to have a different place to stare at her phone from encountering an equally insufferable old guy (Robert Patrick) with a tendency to break the fourth wall right into the camera who has found the new hobby of murdering people. I have no idea why I should care, or what the film’s permanent shifts between blood, the flattest jokes outside of a pancake, META!, and whatever the director/writer wanted to shove in next are supposed to achieve, but I’m sure everybody involved thinks this one’s really, really clever, given all the smug mugging into the camera the film and the actors do.


Blackhat (2015): On the other hand, I thought Michael Mann’s generally maligned crime and action movie that presses an actual performance out of Chris Hemsworth instead of a star turn is rather good. After the horrors of Miami Vice, Mann has returned to his old tricks – actors doing ACTING in diners, hoisting enough detail into a film to make the silly perfectly believable – and come up with a film that’s about as realistic a portrayal of international hacking shenanigans as Hackers was, but that creates its world with such drive and force, I even found myself buying into the even more improbable finale in which Hemsworth – genius hacker and action movie badass at the same time – does manly shit wearing phone book armour.

In short: Miami Vice (2006)

The least subtle undercover cops alive, Crockett (Colin Farrell letting his hair and whatever that stuff growing on his face is do the acting this time around) and Tubbs (Jamie Foxx, woefully underused despite being the more interesting character with room for a deeper character arc and being simply less stilted in his role) are roped into an investigation concerning a mysterious big time drug operator after one of their former informants gets killed working on the case. In between shoot-outs, shots of Farrell rubbing his neck and head ponderously, and various explosions, Crockett also falls in Instant Big Lust with Isabella (Gong Li), one of the leading heads of the cartel they are investigating.

Like all the mainstream film critics that heaped praise on this film, I’m a big admirer of most of the oeuvre of Michael Mann, but this movie version of Mann’s old stomping grounds, the 80s cop show Miami Vice, leaves me decidedly cold. For the most part, it is because most of Mann’s standard tricks don’t work for me here. He’s perhaps trying his usual thing of adding veracity to a highly improbable script by providing many layers of absolutely realistic feeling details, but all of these details don’t really add up to any reality here, but just add more mannerisms to an already incredibly mannered and over-stylized film, making things not less but more antiseptic.


It doesn’t help the film at all that its script (by Mann and co-TV-Miami Vice-veteran Anthony Yerkovich) seems to work from a “Miami Vice plot elements” checklist, where every big beat of the show needs to be included in some way, turning the whole affair clumsy and ponderous where leanness would probably have helped. But then, leanness has never been part of the Mann approach. This is also the kind of film that becomes basically paralyzed by all of the clichés and tropes it needs to somehow stuff into its running time, so Crockett gets to hear the “in too deep” speech about twenty minutes into the case, and he and Isabella basically jump each other the moment they lay eyes on each other. Who cares that it doesn’t make sense for the kinds of people they are supposed to be, or that Farrell and Gong have no on-screen chemistry whatsoever despite the film’s permanent visual insistence that this is The Big Thing. And don’t get me started on how stupid everyone in the film needs to be to let things play out like they do here. Again, these are not problems new to Mann’s work, but usually, he’s telling his tales of moody macho men embedded in what feels like a (not necessarily the) real world in which they and their troubles actually belong. Here, it’s just the posing of emotionally stunted assholes typical of bad high budget action cinema in front of slick backgrounds without substance or emotional resonance relating them to actual human feelings. And when it comes to high budget action, there are simply better choices for a viewer.

In short: Manhunter (1986)

Before Anthony Hopkins chewed the scenery as Hannibal Lector, there was this Michael Mann adaptation of Robert Harris’s first novel featuring everyone’s favourite cannibalistic psychiatrist/psychiatric cannibal (in a minor role). Brian Cox gives a rather more laidback Hannibal (in this case named Lecktor), because on the psycho side, Manhunter is mostly the show of Tom Noonan as Francis Dollarhyde. Noonan goes for a performance that finds the wounded in the grotesque and the horrible, making Dollarhyde relatable as a terrible human being because we can still see his humanity in his monstrosity. In a way, Dollarhyde reflects William Petersen’s Will Graham who has wounded himself by having to become the grotesque and the horrible to understand it.

Plotwise, after about three million post Silence of the Lambs films, Manhunter does look rather quotidian, with Graham basically having all the problems all movie profilers have (whereas real life profilers, going by the books they write when they retire, mostly seem to suffer from badly inflated egos and a concept of their own importance you don’t need to be a cosmicist to find ridiculous), Dollarhyde’s peculiar obsessions looking downright sensible compared to the nonsense many of his later colleagues will get up to, and a lot of dialogue sounding very much like the psycho procedural movie version of “yada yada”. However, there’s not just Noonan’s strong performance to carry the film but also Michael Mann’s peculiar sensibilities as a director. Never has the plot been written that Mann will not turn strange through an emphasis on atypical plot beats, and the staging of scenes in highly stylized and individual manners.

In this case, Mann has decided to bury his characters in horrifying modernist architecture and the colour white, suggesting that a lot of what’s wrong with these people is caused by an overabundance of white light.

Band of the Hand (1986)

Young offenders Carlos (Danny Quinn), Ruben (Michael Carmine), J.L. (John Cameron Mitchell), Moss (Leon), and Dorcey (Al Shannon) are pressed into one of those survivalist betterment programs for young criminals movies are so very fond of, the sort of thing that’d be liable to end up with somebody dead in the real world. They’re learning the art of survival with former marine Joe (Stephen Lang), conquering race and class barriers and winning self esteem by barely not dying in the Everglades.

Unlike many other films of this ilk, Band of the Hand is very interested in what happens next, so Joe takes his boys back to Miami to live in a dilapidated house in the worst part of town; things could go well, if not for the fact that their new home belongs to the territory of mid-level drug operator Cream (Laurence Fishburne when they still called him Larry), and Cream doesn’t look fondly on people who throw junkies out of a house in his territory. In a turn of dramatic irony, Cream’s boss just happens to be a certain creep named Nestor (James Remar), also the former boss of Carlos, who has taken (and the emphasis really is on taken here) Carlos’s girlfriend Nikki (Lauren Holly) as what amounts to his sex slave.

Things turn violent when Joe decides to make a stand, and his boys decide to make that stand with him.

It’s difficult not to look at Paul Michael Glaser’s Band of the Hand as a Michael Mann film, even though Mann only (or “only”, who really knows) executive produced, for the film has Mann’s handprints all over it, from the production design to the music to the overall weirdness by way of an 80s concept of stylishness (which Mann at least in part created with Miami Vice) to the problematic character arc of its sole female character – it’s all very Mann and to me seems to have very little to do with the actor turned director whose next film was Running Man.

That’s not a bad thing at all, mind you, for who else but Mann would start a movie as a psychologically crude and weirdly moralizing survivalist adventure, have it turn into some sort of glossy (and still weird) social drama only to have it end up an improbable vigilante movie? And who else would manage to let this tonal change feel like an actual organic (or whatever more appropriate word there is replacing “organic” in Mann’s and Glaser’s highly artificial cinematic language) part of the film, thematically fitting if ethically and psychologically dubious? That dubiousness even seems to be something the film is conscious of, as it seems to have an inkling of how problematic its own treatment of female belonging as some subset of ownership issue between men is. The former knowledge lends the film’s violent end a degree of ambiguity, while the latter doesn’t really amount to much. At least, though, the film is clearly trying; if only up to a point.

Aesthetically, Band of the Hand does that curious thing Mann and Mann-inspired US 80s films loved to do where they talk about urban squalor but just can’t help themselves to stylize and aestheticize the hell out of this squalor, turning “the Ghetto” itself into as much of a part of the glossy, slick 80s as the shoulder pads, the hairspray, and the frightening, cold interior architecture. Here, this very unreal idea of the real world stands in wonderful contrast to the film’s Everglades based scenes that may still look slick but just can’t look artificial, the weird city standing against the authenticity of nature. Yet because this is a film made by city boys, it also knows that the weird city is exactly the place where people must live in the end lest they turn into hermits, and avoids the whole hippie nature as purity business. The weirdness and the hateful sides of (modern) life are unavoidable, and the film stays ambiguous about wanting it this way or not; it’s not as if its characters have as much of a choice as the script’s more survivalist moments pretend they have anyhow.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,reviews,paul michael glaser,michael mann,crime,action,drama,stephen lang,lauren holly,danny quinn,james remar

In short: The Keep (1983)

1940. A troop of German soldiers under the command of Hautpmann Klaus Woermann (Jürgen Prochnow doing his usual “good German” shtick that has little to do with the atrocities the real Wehrmacht committed quite without SS help, but you know how it goes with these things) takes control of an ancient, and rather strange, keep in a Romanian mountain pass. Some greedy soldiers accidentally free an Ancient Evil™ from its captivity, and soon, said Evil is killing about one soldier a night. Woermann finds himself helpless to do anything against it.

Things don’t improve when SS major Kaempffer (Gabriel Byrne) arrives with his men to “help out”. Carting in a Romanian, Jewish scholar (Ian McKellen) and his daughter (Alberta Watson) just before they’re deported into a concentration camp only provides the Evil with a useful Renfield. Fortunately for those parts of the world who aren’t fans of the whole evil thing, our AE does have an Ancient Enemy™, too. A certain Glaeken (Scott Glenn) slowly makes his way to Romania and just might get around to doing some good.

I’m what you’d generally see as a good candidate to appreciate Michael Mann’s The Keep (based on one of the few readable novels of the mostly insufferable libertarian F. Paul Wilson), as I’m the kind of guy who often sees no problems with films taking a “style over sense” approach. Of course, most of those films don’t make heavy, yet empty gestures towards saying something profound about the nature of “Evil”, and aren’t as dull as The Keep is.

Pretty the film sure is, though, with Tangerine Dreams’ ill-fitting soundtrack and Alex Thomson’s beautiful photography producing some fine picture postcards with sound. Alas that prettiness is completely at odds with the tone the film needs to have to actually reach the effect it is aiming at. It’s rather difficult to feel dread, or even become convinced of the existence of Evil when the film’s visuals have nothing whatsoever to do with these things. Mann’s type of artificiality as a director is the completely wrong one here too, completely missing the mark of the dream-like state the film needs to induce in its audience to work, given the vacuousness and just plain bad craftsmanship of a script that drags out the least important scenes until they feel as if they were going on forever, and barely finds time for the important stuff.

One might think the really rather wonderful cast might manage to salvage something out of the script’s mix of dullness and disinterest in the themes its supposedly about, but all performances are just as dull and lifeless, the unconvincing and uninteresting dialogue delivered in ways suggesting everyone involved was replaced by a life-sized manikin of themselves.

The resulting film has such an air of boredom surrounding it I’m not even interested enough to find out what went wrong during the course of The Keep’s production (because this surely can not be the film Mann actually wanted to make); I’m just glad it’s over and I won’t have to watch it again until I’ve forgotten how little I care for it.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,scott glenn,alberta watson,jürgen prochnow,gabriel byrne,ian mckellen,horror,michael mann

Some Observations Regarding Thief (1981)

Michael Mann's cinematic debut as a director is a long-time favourite of mine, so instead of a full-length write-up, I'll just give some random observations. I wouldn't review my mum either, after all (but if she's reading: 10/10, and Thief's about on her level, though my Mum isn't a clear co-inspiration for Refn's Drive).

One particularly interesting aspect of the movie is how it bridges two very different movie eras and approaches, the heated grittiness (in lack of a better description) of 70s crime cinema and the cool glossiness of the 80s. Both are represented to about the same degree here. Unlike with your typical bridge movie, this isn't a slow and unsure approach from an old style towards a new one but rather a courageous attempt to keep what's best of the old - as exemplified by James Caan's performance and the film's fascination with the way equipment and things actually work - and fuse it with the barely born new I find easiest observed in Tangerine Dream's synth rock soundtrack and the rhythm the film's editing takes on whenever it's not just putting the camera on Caan and his wonderful supporting cast and letting them work.

Mann's trust in Caan's ability to carry any scene - and his willingness to use this ability - is quite uncommon for a director like him who makes movies where every scene and shot seem particularly strictly composed. This type of director usually doesn't leave much space for his actors to actually breath (if you ask me, this was the main failing of Stanley Kubrick, which of course can come in handy when you need to squeeze a performance out of somebody like Tom Cruise). In Thief, Mann manages to have his cake and eat it, too.

The film has an open fascination with hands-on technology which it shares with a group of heist movies through the ages whose approach to practiced criminality always seemed decidedly working-class to me. In Thief's case, this fascination resonates with a growing realization of the decline of industrial and working class America. Fittingly, the relationship between Caan's Frank and Robert Prosky's syndicate man Leo mirrors that between a skilled worker and a more paternal boss. In the end, the paternal boss of course still owns you and will fuck you over when he finds it useful.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,crime,basically marxist,michael mann,james caan,tuesday weld,james belushi,robert prosky