Michael Mann
Thief
Heat
Hi, hello, and good evening, dear readers! It’s a chaotic time in the culture and in the world at large and I’m indulging in my favorite form of escapism: watching movies. Yesterday was the birthday of director Michael Mann—an auteur with a filmmaking style as distinct and refined as Tarantino’s or Kubrick’s, but who is rarely discussed or praised in the same capacity. And in a time where seemingly no director can make a decent blockbuster film anymore, I crave a good, old-fashioned, action thrill ride with more than just famous intellectual property behind it—but instead, a good story. Michael Mann was born on February 5th, 1943 in Chicago, the only child of Russian-Jewish immigrants. He studied English and fell in love with film in college after seeing Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. As Mann explained once, “It said to my whole generation of filmmakers that you could make an individual statement of high integrity and have that film be successfully seen by a mass audience all at the same time. In other words, you didn't have to be making Seven Brides for Seven Brothers if you wanted to work in the mainstream film industry, or be reduced to niche filmmaking if you wanted to be serious about cinema. So that's what Kubrick meant, aside from the fact that Strangelove was a revelation.” I, too, am a Jew who majored in English and became even more obsessed with film in college, and somehow, I’d never seen a single Michael Mann movie, until now. After college, Mann attended graduate school in London, and in 1968, footage he shot of the Paris student revolt aired on the NBC News program First Tuesday—which led to him developing this footage into a short film called Jaunpuri, winning him the Jury Prize at Cannes in 1970. When he moved back to the states, he began working on television shows like Starsky and Hutch, Vega$, and Crime Story, and eventually he became the show runner and executive producer of Miami Vice—a show with a distinctly neon aesthetic, a gruff attitude, and clean cut violence that would become a signature of Mann’s. In 1985, Mann actually sued William Friedkin for plagiarism, claiming that Friedkin stole the entire concept of Miami Vice (1984) when he made the movie To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) Mann lost the lawsuit but despite this, the two directors became close friends. Friedkin even poked fun at Mann in a few interviews by saying "Michael Mann is one of my favorite directors because he tries to make films like mine!" He is a meticulous creator, who remains so singularly-focused on one specific project at a time that it often takes him years to complete production. He prefers to utilize practical effects for his iconic action scenes, with actors attending boot camps for weapons-handling and firing “full load” blanks in scenes to accurately depict these scenarios. Mann’s films have been particularly noted for their realism with capturing the sounds of gunfire, as he often uses raw audio captured from the scene. Tonight’s second film, for example, features a large-scale shootout that takes place not on a soundstage, but in downtown LA, where Mann carefully placed microphones to catch the actual sound of the bullets being fired, as opposed to editing these noises in during post—which was groundbreaking.
It’s clear that Mann has a fascination with the law, those who commit crimes, and the muddy ways in which both sides contribute to corruption, so it’s no surprise that in 1981 his first breakthrough film was his neo-noir Thief. Thief transports us to a rainy, grimy, downright Gotham City-esque Chicago, where a man named Frank (James Caan) is leading his expert team of jewel thieves to execute their plan perfectly. The entire operation is impressively clean, confident, and concise, and when the camera somehow went inside of the safe lock that Frank was picking—I knew that Michael Mann was the man. Frank is an experienced career criminal, who has two successful businesses—a car dealership and a bar—that he uses as fronts. Frank and his fence/moving man have a falling out—literally, because this middleman is thrown out of a twelve-story window after getting involved with an even shadier crowd: the Chicago Outfit aka mafia. Unbeknownst to Frank, this mob boss has been collecting a significant cut of Frank's goods for some time, which sends Frank into a rage. Leo (Robert Prosky), the boss, returns the money but gushes to Frank over his keen eye for quality stolen goods and efficient professionalism—eventually offering him a job that will turn an even higher profit than Frank is used to. Frank is content in his small-scale, large-score operation, but when he starts dating a waitress named Jessie (Tuesday Weld), he realizes that this opportunity could set him up well enough to retire and live the normal, happy, family life he claims to desire. Reluctantly, Frank brings his team on to work with Leo, making plans to adopt a child with Jessie, buy a house, help his jailed mentor Okla (Willie Nelson), and get out of the business for good. He even keeps a little vision board in his wallet that details his retirement plans, which was unexpectedly sweet for such a brassy character. Even though the heist goes well, with his right hand man Barry (Jim Belushi) assisting, tensions unsurprisingly rise between the freelance thief and the big-man mob boss when payday comes. Frank wants his money, he wants the dirty cops on the beat to get off his back, and he wants to finally quit this life of crime for good, but things only become more complicated from here. For all of its chaos and semi-confusing alliances, Thief is a strangely romantic and emotional movie, with a shockingly-happy ending. You can see how dedicated and considerate of a filmmaker Mann is, even with his first feature-length film. With music by Tangerine Dream (a German electronic music group), clever camera angles, and the passionate, sweaty performances of the entire ensemble, Thief places you right into its anxious, seedy environment and doesn’t let you breathe a sigh of relief until the credits roll. After the success of Thief, Michael Mann went on to make The Keep, Manhunter (the first time the character of Hannibal Lecter was adapted to the screen), The Last of the Mohicans, The Insider, Collateral, Public Enemies, Ali, the Miami Vice film, Blackhat, and most recently, Ferrari, but the film that Mann is most often known and appreciated for is his 1995 crime epic Heat. I was exhausted by last week’s viewing of the nearly three-hour long Soviet classic Stalker, so I was eager to kick back with some high-stakes, normal-paced action movies, but Heat is actually even longer than Stalker. When I realized this, I was a bit like… what the fuck? And on top of this, Heat features Val Kilmer in one of the worst ponytail wigs I’ve ever seen, and on top of that this movie is streaming on Disney Plus? I had so many questions, and so many people asking me to watch this one, that I had to just sit down, take a deep breath, and finally get into it. If you thought that James Caan’s operation in Thief was impressively organized, Heat spends its nearly three-hour runtime one-upping the stakes and the scale of thievery.
Robert De Niro stars as Neil McCauley, another career criminal who doesn’t let his emotions or dreams of retirement get in the way of his plans, and he has coached all of his thieving partners to do the same. His team consists of Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, Danny Trejo, and John Voight—who assists from the sidelines. The film opens with an incredible and suspenseful robbery of an armored bank car which goes off without a hitch—until a new member of the gang, Waingro (Kevin Gage), gets spooked and kills a cop. Neil is livid at this unnecessary mess, but successfully leads his team to victory, coming away with over a million dollars in bearer bonds. This gang has their heists down to a precise science: not wasting time with stealing cash, knowing how long it will take the police to get there, setting up a row of tire spikes to halt the cops, and having multiple escape routes planned. Bewildered and stunned by the expert-work on this job, Lieutenant Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) shows up to the scene of the crime that night and can’t decide if he’s frightened or turned on by these fresh, intelligent criminal adversaries. Pacino is on his third marriage (to Diane Venora) and worries about his depressed and neglected step-daughter, Lauren (Natalie Portman), but not enough to actually make time for his family. Instead, he dives into this case headfirst, desperate to catch the men who are making him look like he’s bad at his job. Meanwhile, after firing the novice psycho who almost ruined the job, Neil and his crew are preparing for their next score. This gang of skillful thieves is like a little, fucked up family, with wives and kids and mortgages to pay. Neil is the lone wolf of the bunch, that is until he meets a bookstore clerk/graphic designer named Eady (Amy Brenneman), with whom he shares a boring but sweet meet-cute. They clearly have some kind of regular-person-type connection, but as Neil later warns Chris (Val Kilmer), who’s having troubles with his wife Charlene (Ashley Judd), “Don’t have anything in your life that you can’t let go of in thirty seconds when you see the heat coming around the corner.” Much like Vincent, Neil has buried himself in his work and has ruined any chance of having a normal, human existence, even if he seemingly has more friends and comforts than the Lieutenant. The entire film constantly alternates between the interior lives and careers of Vincent and Neil—consistently drawing comparisons between their Machiavellian persistence in achieving their respective goals. They live and die by their own, personal code of ethics, and they seem intrigued, if not titillated by one another’s unorthodox methods. While De Niro and Pacino do this will-they-won’t-they dance around LA, we see dazzling, aerial shots of the ocean, palm trees, bright lights, dark alleyways, but most memorably, we see Pacino chewing the scenery in every frame he’s in. For years I’d seen a particular clip of Pacino from this film going around the internet, where he yells, “SHE’S GOT A GREAT ASS” (an improvised line, btw), completely out of context, and seeing it in context now, it still feels like the scenario didn’t necessarily call for that kind of delivery. I also didn’t realize that Pacino’s trademark-yelling would be so heavily featured here, especially when he’s trying to play hard to get with the cool-as-a-cucumber De Niro. Every clever plan to catch Neil’s gang is easily-thwarted by these passionate perps, they are more than equipped to handle the LAPD—even when Vincent invites Neil out for a cup of coffee. The interaction is teeming with suspense and absolutely overflowing with sexual tension. These men obviously have more in common with each other than they’re comfortable admitting, and yet they’re weirdly comfortable sitting with each other despite their opposing stances—they even discuss their dreams. Just like in Thief, the dialogue in Heat was well-written and realistic. There’s no quippy Aaron Sorkin banter between them—which, don’t get me wrong, I love—instead they speak wearily and wisely, in their own tough-guy language that only they know. Neil and Vincent are star-crossed besties/lovers, in the way that Keanu and Patrick Swayze are in Point Break, in the way Matt Damon and DiCaprio are in The Departed, and I couldn’t help rooting for this ill-fated but believable romance. Heat is a heart-pounding, palm-sweating, oddly romantic crime thriller that starts with its foot on the gas and never lets up. The cinematography is elegant, the music is entrancing, and the cast is incredibly stacked—featuring actors I haven’t even mentioned like Wes Studi, Ted Levine, Mykelti Williamson, Dennis Haysbert, William Fichtner, Tom Noonan, Hank Azaria, Henry Rollins, Tone Loc, Jeremy Piven, Brian Libby, Paul Herman, Martin Ferrero, Kim Staunton, and Bud Cort. I really only watched Heat because I wanted to watch and fully appreciate Chris Fleming’s brilliant summarization of this legendary bromantic film, but it ended up exceeding my expectations. Given my aversion to specifically Al Pacino-centric 90s thrillers I wasn’t sure if this film would be for me, but I was so enthralled the entire time, I was practically cheering at my screen when that final scene faded out. It’s a compelling, propulsive, and really entertaining movie that made me feel things, which I didn’t expect. It made me nostalgic for the free-wheeling action movies that I grew up with. They used to make movies about schemes, you know? I was raised on Ocean’s Eleven and National Treasure and James Bond, where the stakes and the humor were turned up to eleven, and the word “antihero” still had meaning. I haven’t seen many action films in the modern era that have achieved this delicate dramatic balance, but I still hold out hope for the Michael Mann’s of the future. I can understand why so many people love Heat, and why it is referenced in so many other pieces of media, and I even understand why Michael Mann still plans to make a sequel, even though it’s probably unnecessary. I love when a movie proves me wrong, and shatters my preconceived ideas about how bro-ey or boring it will be, and both of tonight’s films certainly accomplished this. Happy belated birthday, Michael Mann, you amazing, Aquarian artiste. Sorry for sleeping on you! Until next time, if you can’t take the heat, get out of my blog! Ttyl ;)
