And I think that's what makes films like Thief, Manhunter and Heat and cut above most efforts in the crime film genre. Mann is fascinated by watching people at work, in fact most of his films start with his protagonists already in the middle of a job -- Frank cracking the safe at the beginning of Thief, Neil and his crew knocking over the armoured truck in Heat, and Lowell Bergman meeting with a Hezbollah honcho at the beginning The Insider. Mann is interested in portraying characters who are at the top of their profession and what happens when they have a conflict with someone else who is also very good at what they do. Even though they may be antagonists, there is usually some form of mutual respect -- i.e. the famous meeting of De Niro and Pacino in the diner in Heat when they size each other up and basically lay out their philosophies to one another.John Cope wrote:What I loved so much about it was what I think makes Mann always great. It was serious about the whole "men doing a job" thing, but unlike all the prosaic procedurals which clutter our airwaves the series cast that work and those men in a mythic light. This is still the aspect of Mann that gets the least attention. Everyone quite understandably respects his technical craftsmanship and his attention to detail but those elements are always at the service of a greater goal, a kind of contemporary mythologizing for lack of a better word. He sees what so few other action directors do--the vast potential meaning of the action experience and the latent drama that exists to be tapped into, not simply grafted onto the surface.
Well said! I couldn't agree more. It should be interesting to see how Mann's thematic preoccupations fare in this new movie. If he will continue explore the push and pull battle that many of his protagonists have of between their job, what they do and their desire for a family or some kind of relationship. Usually, when they take they betray their profession it results in their downfall (Neil in Heat) and only when they realize that they have to stay true to their professionalism (like Frank does in Thief and Vincent in Heat) do they succeed.As to Vice, I 've been hoping for this film to come about for a number of years and I am very encouraged by the results so far. Farrell and Foxx seem like great choices to me and the desire to update the style is absolutely fitting. The official website posts a summary of the plot which is also encouraging because it sounds as though Mann is going to embrace what was at the heart of the series and consider the implications of one of my favorite themes, being that of identity. The series always toyed with the notion of the cops' undercover identities, but mostly as a way of justifying the excess on display. But the false and superficial identities that these heroic characters had to wear around the clock must have had some psychological effect (and did, as judged by the triumvirate of episodes in which Crockett loses his memory and clings to the false persona, mining all its potential evil). This, of course, plays back into the mythic ideas Mann always traffics in. The iconic moments of the series--the music video type sequences and the fetishized posturing--were a reference to the way modern people choose to mythologize their own lives and moments of personal significance, complete with backing vocals and hazy memory sunsets. Mann was not interested in going the facile route of easily criticizing this human inclination but rather depicting it with utter sincerity as something inherent to the human condition, the desire for greater importance. And yet what happens if a person can get no perspective on what they are doing and the pose is all attitude and loses touch with its empathetic roots? What are the costs to real human relationships which rely on vulnerability not fortress of steel iconic posturing? It sounds as though these are the themes Mann will be exploring more thoroughly in the film. Here's hoping.
), but it's a wonderful film that works on every level from the intimate to the epic and stands up to repeated viewings.
