Michael Mann Week: Collateral

After the commercial failure and mixed critical reaction to the vastly underrated Ali (2001), Michael Mann returned to familiar territory — the urban crime thriller — with Collateral (2004). Coming off three grandiose epics in a row, the veteran filmmaker shifted gears with this lean, no-nonsense film that harkens back to early films in his career like Thief (1981). One has to wonder if the pressure was on Mann to make a more audience-friendly film after his last two failed to produce at the box office. Like the late Stanley Kubrick (of whom he is sometimes compared to), Mann has tried repeatedly to breakthrough to a mainstream audience. It would make sense then that he would cast Hollywood megastar Tom Cruise as one of the main protagonists. If there were any actor on the planet that could guarantee a sure-fire hit at the box office it would be Cruise (although, it didn’t work out for Kubrick when he cast the actor in Eyes Wide Shut). However, Mann throws a potential spanner in the works by casting the actor as an amoral hit man. Would this scare off a mainstream audience?

Collateral is about three lonely professionals who are brought together over the course of one night. Max (Jamie Foxx) has been a cab driver in Los Angeles for twelve years. He is anal-retentive about his cab as evident by the way he meticulously cleans the inside and out of it. Mann shows the fragmented details of the noisy garage full of hustle and bustle where Max is working on his cab: people fixing car engines and cabbies arguing. The director also includes close-ups of engines, license plates, a steering wheel, a front bumper and a tail light. As soon as Max closes the door of the cab all the cacophony of the garage is gone. He is alone with his thoughts just like Jeffrey Wigand at the beginning of The Insider (1999). They are both in their own soundless bubbles, however, for Wigand it is a prison while for Max it is his own private oasis as signified by the postcard of a tropical island that he affixes to the visor in his car. Like Frank in Thief, this postcard represents his dreams. Max looks at his postcard while a couple argues in the back of his cab. It is his escape from the pressures of the day.

His first fare is a beautiful assistant District Attorney by the name of Annie Farrell (Jada Pinkett Smith). She gives him directions but he has a better route and they make a bet: if her way is shorter then the fare is free. She is bemused by his wager and as they drive through the city, Mann includes shots of the freeway at night bathed in warm light with classic soul music playing on the soundtrack, creating a warm and inviting mood as they get to know each other. The dialogue between these two people flows naturally as they talk about their respective jobs. Max charms her by figuring out what she does and talking about his dream of opening his own limousine service: “Island Limos. It’s gonna be like an island on wheels. A cool groove like a club experience. When you get to the airport you’re not gonna wanna get out of my limo.” Max guesses that Annie is a lawyer by what she is wearing. She opens up and tells him about her insecurities with her high-pressure profession.

We find out that Max is a good judge of character and that Annie likes what she does but has her reservations, fears, doubts and feels comfortable enough to tell him. He says that she needs a vacation and gives her his postcard so that she has somewhere to escape to when things get too hectic. She gives him her business card opening up the possibility and the hint of romance. They have made a connection. Despite a premise that is steeped in the crime genre, Mann manages to keep things fresh and interesting by starting things off with an intimate conversation between two lonely souls who have met by chance.

After dropping off Annie, Max picks up his next customer and the tone of the film changes. Vincent (Tom Cruise) is all business and tells the cabby that he is a salesman in town to visit with five clients. When Max tells him it will only take seven minutes to get to his destination, Vincent is willing to time him but the cabby is not going to offer him a free ride like he did with Annie. Vincent talks about how he hates L.A. and how it is “sprawled out, disconnected.” He recounts a story about how a man died on the subway and his body rode on it for six hours with nobody noticing. Their small talk is reminiscent of the conversation Max had with Annie and they even talk about some of the same things, like Max’s proposed limo service but he does not go into the same kind of detail with Vincent because he does not feel as comfortable with him.

When they arrive at Vincent’s stop, he offers Max $600 to drive him to five other destinations around the city. It seems too good to be true and this scene plays out in the cab bathed in eerie green light, forewarning danger as Max will regret his decision to accept Vincent’s proposal in a few minutes. During the first stop a man crashes onto the roof of Max’s cab. The charade is over and Vincent is forced to play his hand. He is actually a hit man hired to kill five key witnesses in an indictment against a Latin American drug cartel. He proceeds to intimidate and force the shocked cabby at gunpoint into helping him.

One of the hits later on in Collateral is also the film’s most impressive action set piece – a memorably choreographed shoot-out at a night club. Vincent demonstrates just how efficient a killing machine he really is, shooting, knifing and breaking bones of anyone who gets in the way of his intended target. This sequence was shot in a Korean nightclub called Fever with 700 extras over nine days. Mann amplifies every deafening gunshot and every snap of bone for jarring, realistic effect. It is a fantastically orchestrated chaos on par with Mann’s other great action sequence, the famous bank heist in Heat (1995) as everyone converges on the club: the FBI investigating Felix, representatives from the cartel, the L.A. police department, the target’s bodyguards, and, of course, Max and Vincent.

Tom Cruise expertly transforms himself into one of Mann’s quintessential protagonists. Like Frank in Thief and Neil McCauley in Heat, Vincent is a consummate professional with an economical use of words. Cruise portrays Vincent as a cold-hearted killer who has no problem justifying what he does — after all it is part of the job — nothing more, nothing less. As the actor remarked in an interview, “He is an iconic killer, and he knows for himself that what he’s doing is correct, and wants to approach this in a professional manner—but then there’s things that he doesn’t even realize are happening to him, subtly.” Cruise treads a fine line between calculated menace and slick charm. Every so often he hints at something else going on behind Vincent’s eyes — a whole inner life that we only catch glimpses of. This is something he has done to a limited degree in Interview with a Vampire (1994) and Magnolia (1999) but not quite with the same intensity or in such detail as with this role.

The risk in casting someone like Cruise is that he carries a lot of baggage with him. His face and voice are so recognizable that it is hard for him to disappear into a role. Mann was conscious of this when he cast Cruise: “Tom is one of the most recognizable people on the planet. And so you have to make him Vincent. I use everything—the bones, the colors, the patterns, the rhythms of the character to end up with what you see. Everything goes into the performance. And then the clothes just fit. It all becomes seamless.” It does not take Cruise long to shed his megastar persona and become Vincent. By the time he kills two thugs trying to rob Max with ruthless efficiency, there is no question that Cruise has become this character. The choice of the non-descript grey suit was an important aspect of Vincent’s character. Mann said in an interview: “It’s not really a disguise, but it’s anonymous. If somebody actually witnesses him and the police ask for a description, what are people going to say? A middle-aged, middle-height guy wearing a middle grey suit and white shirt. It describes anybody and nobody in terms of Vincent’s trade craft.”

In contrast, Jamie Foxx provides the humanistic counterbalance to Cruise’s amoral existentialist. He is obviously the audience surrogate but Mann does not hit the audience over the head with this fact. Max cares about what happens to the people Vincent kills and is horrified by his actions. Known more as a comedian, Foxx has shown in recent years, with Any Given Sunday (1999) and Ali, that he has the capacity for dramatic roles. His performance in Collateral is his most natural one to date. He abandons all of his usual shtick and creates a full-realized character that avoids the usual tired cabby clichés. Inactivity is perhaps Max’s defining trait. He keeps telling anyone that will listen of his desire to open his own business and yet he has made little progress in the twelve years he’s driven a taxi. This comes to the surface when he and Vincent visit Max’s mother in the hospital. This is a pivotal scene where the presence of Vincent acts as a catalyst that transforms Max into a proactive character.

Yet, there is emptiness to the lives of Annie, Max and Vincent. Mann constantly captures them in the vast empty spaces of deserted streets, back alleys and subway cars with his expansive widescreen aspect ratio. As Vincent constantly reminds Max, “Nobody notices.” These characters are alienated by a cold and uncaring city. With the exception of Max’s mother, none of these characters have any significant friends or family. What they do for a living is what defines them.

The idea for Collateral came to screenwriter Stuart Beattie during a cab ride from Kingsford Smith Airport to his home in suburban Sydney, Australia. During the ride he remembers thinking, “I could be a homicidal maniac. You never get in a car with a stranger, never pick up a hitcher, but a cab driver defies those rules. Taxis are mini-islands floating around the city with two people in a confined space. It was rife for drama.” Beattie studied at Oregon State University and wrote the first draft of The Last Domino. It “sat in a drawer” for years while he went on to write Pirates of the Caribbean (2003). His script made the rounds in Hollywood before he gave it to producer Julie Richardson. She liked the screenplay and tried to develop it at HBO with Frank Darabont in 1999. They eventually passed on it and later that year, DreamWorks executive Marc Haimes renamed the script Collateral and brought the project to Walter Parkes, co-head of the studio with Russell Crowe interested in playing the role of Vincent. Beattie remembers that Crowe “really got the heat on it. After three years of the script going around Hollywood, once Russell got involved, it was alive again.” Other directors, like Mimi Leder and Janusz Kaminski, expressed an interest in making the movie.

After Ali, Mann spent two years developing The Aviator (2004) but ultimately decided not to direct instead taking on the role of producer because he wanted to do a “story that took place in L.A., at night.” He soon agreed to direct Collateral but Crowe had to drop out due to a scheduling conflict. The director was attracted to the compressed time frame in the script, much like the structure of Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, the film that made him want to be a filmmaker in the first place. “I was making an entire motion picture out of only the third act. This is the denouement: the finale is at the beginning of the movie and that’s it. Dr. Strangelove’s the same, in that it begins with the ending. Sterling Hayden launches, that’s it, they’re gone. Two acts probably built it up to that.”

When Mann came aboard he contributed an uncredited rewrite changing the offscreen bad guys to a narco cartel based in Latin America who is trying to avoid indictment by a federal grand jury. He also changed the setting from New York City to Los Angeles. Mann said that he “changed the culture, the locale, the characters’ back stories and what they talk about, but I didn’t change the narrative structure or the engineering under the surface.” Parkes remembers, “Michael talked about wanting to shoot in Los Angeles in ways that it’s never been shot before—a multilingual, multiethnic city at night, a very particular evocation.”

Actor Tom Cruise had wanted to work with Mann ever since he first saw Thief. Cruise said, “I have seen all of Mann’s movies. It’s something you want to look at and study, because he designs his pictures from the ground up and really has tremendous command of the medium and the story telling.” When Mann sent Cruise the script, the actor remembers, “he sent different stills, almost an art motif of things he was thinking about, and what he wanted to explore.” When they first met, the director offered the role of Max to the actor but it was Cruise who suggested that he play Vincent. He was attracted to the role of Vincent because it was so different from anything else he had done. He was drawn to the character as “how someone becomes an antisocial person.” However, Cruise was not entirely convinced that he could play a villain but Mann remembers telling him “that Al Pacino, De Niro, McQueen had all done it and it was his turn now. He’s 42, so if he didn’t do it now, when would he?” Mann was interested in working Cruise because he wanted to see the actor try a role he had not played before. He elaborated in an interview: “There’s dimensions to Tom that I hadn’t seen on the screen. It became an exploration to bring some of that out, some of the steel that’s in there. Some of the toughness, the certainty and the very good kind of avid, proactive vibe towards a goal, and darker resonances within that.”

Collateral gave Mann another chance to shoot in Los Angeles. He was attracted to its “industrial landscape. I like the feelings of ennui and alienation the vacant landscape suggests.” The director has lived in L.A. since 1971. He once remarked in an interview, “There’s a certain romance of the city at night that I confess I’m completely vulnerable to.” Right away, Mann establishes a multi-ethnic Los Angeles that is rarely seen in Hollywood movies, even his own Heat. In the first ten minutes alone, several different languages are spoken. Mann takes us on a tour of many different neighborhoods, from the high-rise corporate culture of the downtown core to the exotic culture clash of trendy Koreatown. He discovered the multi-ethnic, multi-class aspect of the city while riding around with a detective in an unmarked police car researching for Heat. In many respects, the city itself is a character and Mann constantly reminds us of this with several establishing overhead shots that show off the topography of L.A. Mann takes every opportunity to immerse us completely in the sights and sounds of the city that he knows all too well. Not since Blade Runner (1982) has such an ethnically and economically diverse vision of this city been depicted on film.

Over 80% of Collateral was shot utilizing the state-of-the-art Viper FilmStream digital camera. Mann was the first director to road-test the Viper, the first cinema camera to store images as data directly to a hard drive. In an interview, Mann said that, “with digital, we were able to do seventeen to eighteen 20-minute takes—three-to-four page scenes done en masse.” It allowed Mann to film longer takes because his camera could store 55 minutes on a tape. The entire shoot only took 65 days. A sharp contrast to Heat’s epic 107 day shoot. The look of Mann’s film should be familiar to anyone who saw his short-lived (and little seen) television series, Robbery Homicide Division, which was also shot on digital video. As L.A. Takedown was a dry run, stylistically, for Heat, so too was RHD for Collateral. With this new camera, Mann is able to bring out all kinds of depth and color during night-time scenes that wasn’t possible before. Mann has said in an interview: “It enabled me to be very painterly with building the scene. It’s counterintuitive to photography in every conceivable way. Throw a light meter away, I don’t need it. It’s right there on a high def monitor. But it required knowing exactly what you want because what’s available is a much broader spectrum than a motion picture film.” However, there were certain scenes, like the disco shoot-out that were shot on film because “we were on a big interior set that had to be lit and we could move around more freely with the camera on our shoulder shooting 35mm than we could using digital.”

Collateral was Mann’s most critically well-received film since The Insider and the most commercially profitable since Heat. Jonathan Rosenbaum in the Chicago Reader praised Mann’s storytelling abilities. “Mann’s success with well-worn genre tropes goes hand in hand with his actor – and character-driven approach to storytelling, which provides a solid grounding for the picaresque detours and digressions of Collateral’s plot.” Manohla Dargis in The New York Times described the movie as “very much the product of a distinct vision, one as eager to push technological limits ... as to upend the usual studio white-hero/black-villain formula.” Mark Olsen in Sight and Sound lauded Mann’s use of DV and compared him to Kubrick. “If Kubrick could prefigure the colours and framing of the still-emerging digital aesthetic, Mann is perhaps the perfect filmmaker to take the technology forward.” In his review for Time magazine, Richard Schickel wrote, “But at his best, Mann wears his hipness easily. It works particularly well in Collateral, which has a nice minimalist quality about it – just these two increasingly edgy guys, their car and the people they encounter.”

Michael Atkinson provided one of the rare, dissenting voices with his review for The Village Voice: “Several yowling soundtrack singles are more obtrusive than emphatic, and he is susceptible to the Industry’s de rigueur editing hyperactivity ... Collateral is a slim drink of thin beer, remarkable only as evidence that Mann might have a modern masterpiece in him if he were cut loose and allowed to roam around in his own obsessions.”

Collateral is a fitting addition to Michael Mann’s distinctive filmography. It continues his thematic pre-occupations of isolated protagonists who have little time for personal relationships. It is also deals with another Mann obsession: transformation. In order to have any chance of surviving the night with Vincent, Max must change from being a passive character to one that takes an active role in determining his own fate. It is the exploration of such weighty themes, coupled with Mann’s distinctive style that elevates Collateral from its generic conventions.

Michael Mann Week: Public Enemies

Public Enemies marks Michael Mann’s third foray into American history with The Last of the Mohicans (1992), The Insider (1999) and Ali (2001) being his previous efforts. The director got his start making documentaries and always been interested in achieving absolute authenticity in the depiction of the professions that his protagonists practice, be it safecracking in Thief (1981) or serial killer profiling in Manhunter (1986). Born and raised in Chicago, it is easy to see what drew Mann to the story of John Dillinger, a famous bank robber during the 1930s. He and his crew were the best of the best at the time and so, he certainly fits the kind of protagonist Mann is drawn to.

Public Enemies begins in 1933 during the golden age of bank robbery and Mann wastes no time getting into it as he opens the film with an exciting escape from an Ohio prison orchestrated by Dillinger (Johnny Depp) and his crew. Soon after, we meet FBI agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) in action as he takes down Pretty Boy Floyd (Channing Tatum) with a hunting rifle from an impressive distance. In no time at all, Mann has established the film’s protagonist and antagonist. They are smart, super efficient men of action that are single-minded in their respective goals.

Unable to get funding and criticized by his superiors, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) needs high-profile busts and enlists Purvis to find and stop the country’s Public Enemy No. 1 – John Dillinger. The more notorious he becomes the more this angers not just the FBI but also the Chicago mob because his actions put extra heat on them. There is a nice scene where he meets with a mob representative who basically tells him that he is a dying breed. The money he makes knocking over one bank, they make in one day through illegal gambling.

Mann demonstrates that he is a master at orchestrating action sequences. They are cleanly photographed and edited so that there is no confusion. You can always tell what is going on and who everyone is instead of the kamikaze, headache-inducing editing and slapdash camerawork in films by the likes of Michael Bay and McG. The shoot-out at Dillinger’s hide-out in Little Bohemia is the film’s show-stopping action sequence much like the bank heist in Heat (1995) and the nightclub shoot-out in Collateral (2004). It is powerfully executed and full of tension and excitement as well as an impressive display of firepower with the deafening blasts of tommy guns and shotguns.

Public Enemies reunites Mann with key collaborators, chief among them cinematographer Dante Spinotti who has shot his most memorable films (including Manhunter, The Last of the Mohicans, Heat, and The Insider). Mann has come under considerable criticism for deciding to shoot his last two films with digital cameras and even more so with Public Enemies because it is a period film and audiences are used to seeing them done on traditional film stock. However, this new film looks great with crisp, clear images, especially at night where there is an impressive depth of field. Certain scenes have a graininess to them inherent with digital cameras but, in this case, it gives a tangible, gritty texture that works. There are some truly beautiful shots in this film, like one in which a car carrying Dillinger and his crew hurtle down a road surrounded by a vast forest of trees that tower over them.

Mann is also reunited with composer Elliot Goldenthal who worked on Heat. Since The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Mann has relied on soundtracks comprised mostly of disparate tracks from various sources. Being a period piece, obviously Public Enemies really doesn’t lend itself to that kind of a soundtrack and Goldenthal expertly augments the drama that unfolds in various scenes, creating one of the best scores in a Mann film to date.

The attention to period detail is fantastic with classic trains, cars, and classic gangster iconography like tommy guns, fedoras and trenchcoats permeating the film. Mann really immerses us in the time period but not in a way that calls undo attention to itself. It’s just there in the background of every scene with vintage period architecture. Ever the perfectionist, Mann shot on location, often at the actual locations that Dillinger and his gang frequented. Whether you are consciously aware of this or not, the film just oozes authenticity.

Dillinger certainly enjoys the fruits of his labor but is always planning his next job. He follows his own personal code: he doesn’t kill unless absolutely necessary and doesn’t think about the future, living only in the present because he could easily end up in jail or dead. He is also very conscious of how he’s perceived by the public, enjoying the notoriety his exploits create. Depp portrays him as a very confident guy who is always in control. There is often this mischievous glint in his eye like he’s in on a private joke. Depp plays Dillinger with a lot of charm, like when he addresses the media while being booked in an Indiana jail. He knows how to work the crowd and the charismatic actor is excellent in this scene. However, Public Enemies is not afraid to point out that Dillinger is no hero. The man has no problem with killing someone if they get in his way but the film goes to great lengths to point out that he did so only when there was no other option. Dillinger was clearly a man who didn’t believe in wasting time, much like Frank, the safecracker in Thief. Depp inhabits the role with his customary dedication, adopting a specific voice, accent and effortless delivery of period lingo that sounds natural and genuine.

Christian Bale is quite good as the very determined Purvis. While Mann doesn’t create the balance of cop vs. robber as he did in Heat, Bale is in the film more that I had anticipated. Like other law enforcement figures in Mann’s films, Purvis uses state-of-the-art technology, for the time, to track Dillinger and his crew. As determined as Purvis is, Mann allows some humanity to seep in, like when he stops the brutal interrogation of Dillinger’s girlfriend Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard) and personally helps her get cleaned up. It is this small moment that adds a welcome layer to his character.

There are all kinds of parallels between Public Enemies and Heat. In both films we are meant to sympathize with the bank robber. Also, the two leads only meet face-to-face in one scene. There is a climactic gun-battle where both sides take on significant casualties that alter the conclusion of the story. And, like McCauley in Heat, there is an inevitability to Dillinger’s life; that he will run out of time and luck; that Purvis and the FBI will close the net around him. That being said, Public Enemies not a carbon copy of Heat. Personality-wise, Dillinger and McCauley are very different people with the former being a risk-taker and the latter being overtly cautious. The same goes for the lawmen. Purvis is not the larger-than-life extrovert that Hanna is, but rather a no-nonsense man who gets the job done and that’s it. There’s even a loose cannon in the form of Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham) who is to Public Enemies like Waingro was to Heat. A psychopath that the bank robbers initially ally themselves with but end up cutting loose when he proves to be too unstable. Structurally, both films couldn’t be different as Mann continues to experiment with narrative structure in a fascinating way. This isn’t your typical, cookie-cutter A to B to C plotting, which may frustrate some (see Ali or Miami Vice) but if you the patience and can get into it, watching Public Enemies is a very rewarding experience.

Public Enemies certainly held my attention for its entire, lengthy running time and is an incredible achievement – easily the best period gangster film since Miller’s Crossing (1990). I’m not sure where I would rank it among Mann’s films as I’ve only seen it once and really need to give it some time to sink in but it is a very welcome antidote to the glut of mindless action films that are being released this summer.

Michael Mann Week: Public Enemies Resources

To celebrate Public Enemies' wide release today I am posting a selection of interviews and profiles on the principle cast and crew of the film that have appeared in the press over the past few weeks. So, without further adieu...

"Bonjour! Marion Cotillard on Conspiracies, Public Enemies, & Childhood" by Ray Rogers at BlackBook magazine. (an interview with actress Marion Cotillard)

"Number one with a bullet" by John Patterson at The Guardian. (an interview with director Michael Mann)

"Johnny Depp interview for Public Enemies" by John Hiscock at The Telegraph. (an interview with actor Johnny Depp)

"Dillinger Captured by Dogged Filmmaker!" by Mark Harris at The New York Times. (a profile and history of the film)

"Michael Mann: Seeing history through Dillinger's eyes" by Roger Ebert at the Chicago Sun-Times. (an interview with Mann)

"Michael Mann chats with Capone about crime, punishment and PUBLIC ENEMIES!!!" by Capone at Ain't-It-Cool-News. (an interview with Mann)

"'Public Enemies' No. 1 (in historical accuracy, writer says)" by Bryan Burrough at the Los Angeles Times. (a primer on the history and facts by the man who wrote the book the film is based on) - NOTE: the L.A. Times doesn't leave their articles online for long so if you're interested in checking this article out, do it ASAP!

"Johnny Depp’s Great Escape" by Douglas Brinkley at Vanity Fair magazine. (an interview with Depp)

"Bale wouldn't fraternize with the 'Enemy'" by Cindy Pearlman at the Chicago Sun-Times. (an interview with actor Christian Bale)

"Exclusive Interview: Public Enemies Producer G. Mac Brown, Part 1" by Jake Mooney at 30ninjas. (an interview with one of the producers)

"Chicago is the epicenter of another film credit" by Colleen Mastony at the Chicago Tribune. (about the various locations in and around Chicago)

"Composer Elliot Goldenthal" by S. James Snyder at Time. (an interview with the composer)

"The Real John Dillinger" by Elliott J. Gorn at Slate. (examining the historical accuracy of the film)

Michael Mann Week: The Last of the Mohicans

Hollywood’s depiction of the American West being domesticated during the Classic period is rife with stereotypes. Native Americans in John Ford films, for example, were often portrayed in two ways: as noble savages or ferocious red devils. Until recently, they were often played by white actors with their language reduced to garbled, simple, child-like speak. Not until the 1990s has their authentic languages been used in films. Most films portrayed them as vicious instead of also victims (which is what they really were in many cases) to justify the narrative that usually involved their extermination.

Coming off a cinematic hiatus of six years since Manhunter (1986) was released, Michael Mann returned with a vengeance with his robust, muscular take on The Last of the Mohicans (1992). On the surface, it seemed like a radical departure for a filmmaker known for urban crime dramas like Thief (1981), Miami Vice, and Crime Story but thematically it fits right in with his no-nonsense protagonists who are the best at what they do and are faced with a decision between their profession and the ones they love.

The Last of the Mohicans is set in 1757 during the third year of the war between England and France. Dialogueless footage of three men running through a lush, green forest plays during the opening credits. Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis), Uncas (Eric Schweig) and Chingachook (Russell Means) are hunting a large elk which Hawkeye subsequently shoots and kills with deadly accuracy. This brief sequence establishes him as a man of action and an efficient hunter. Like other Mann protagonists Hawkeye is his own man, preferring to do things on his own terms and is fiercely loyal to his family and friends.

The three men stop by a settler’s cabin that night and learn that the French army with Native Indian support is encroaching on their land. Like his settler friends, Hawkeye does not seem interested in the conflict. It is not his fight. He reinforces this belief two scenes later when a British officer (Jared Harris) tries to recruit him. Hawkeye replies, “You do what you want with your own scalp and I’ll be tellin’ us what we ought to do with ours.” This scene is significant in that we see the dynamic between Hawkeye, Uncas and Chingachook. The latter is the father of the other two men and they are clearly close to each other by the way they act towards one another. This is evident in the opening scene when they worked as a team to hunt the elk and now in this social setting. This scene is also one of domestic bliss, something that is always treasured in a Mann film and one that is also fleeting. Mohicans is no different. Hawkeye and his friends laugh and talk over dinner with a warm, inviting fire in the background. It is an intimate setting, one of safety and familiarity. It will also be the last time they will all enjoy this kind of atmosphere.

Mann’s trademark color palette is muted in Mohicans with green being the only one with any prominence. He uses the green of the forest, that Cora (Madeleine Stowe) and Alice Munro (Jodhi May) travel through on the way to be reunited with their father, Colonel Munro (Maurice Roeves) at Fort William Henry, to foreshadow the impending danger of the Indian sneak attack that will decimate the complement of soldiers protecting them and bring them in contact with Hawkeye for the first time.

The ambush shows the foolishness of the British military tactics. They take their time to form a line giving the attacking Indians ample time to take cover and then counter-attack. In a matter of moments almost all of the British troops have been killed until Hawkeye and his crew arrives and swiftly deals with these marauders with same kind of deadly efficiency. Hawkeye and Magua (Wes Studi) meet face to face for the first time in this scene as Magua narrowly misses Hawkeye with his rifle and then disappears into the forest before he can get a good shot at him. This almost unnatural exit sets up Magua as an unstoppable force of nature, like Hawkeye but only on the opposite end of the moral spectrum. The ambush establishes the quick, brutal nature of combat in the film as Mann moves away from the overtly stylish action in Thief and Manhunter towards a more realistic depiction with truly harrowing scenes of men getting scalped, stabbed and slashed. Every subsequent film Mann would make after Mohicans would depict violence in a jarring, realistic nature.

The character of Magua is fleshed out and given a chance to explain the motivation for his ruthless hatred of the English: his village was burned down, his children killed, he was taken as a slave and his wife thought he was dead and remarried. He delivers a powerful monologue to his French co-conspirator, “In time, Magua became blood brother to the Mohawk, to become free but always in his heart he’s Huron. His heart will be whole again when the day the Gray Hair and all his seed are dead.” Wes Studi delivers this speech with scary intensity that is indicative of his incredible performance throughout the film. He portrays Magua as a ferociously driven man who believes in what he is doing as much as Hawkeye does. Like Daniel Day-Lewis, Studi’s performance is very physical and he commands the screen with his intense presence due in large to his piercing eyes.

Mann is clearly sympathetic to the settlers’ plight and their decision to protect their homes instead of helping defend Fort Henry against the French, which falls to them anyway. However, it is the love story between Cora and Hawkeye that lies at the heart of this film. Aside from a few meaningful, longing looks at each other, their sudden consummation is not believable because no foundation for it has been properly established. Cora is another, strong female Mann character, like Jesse in Thief. She stands up for Hawkeye to her father when he is caught for helping some militia men desert so that they can go defend their homes. She argues Hawkeye’s case and even speaks seditious ideas in front of him. Yet, she spends a lot of the film as a damsel in distress having to be rescued by Hawkeye on at least two occasions.

Mann only betrays the realistic battle scenes once with a stylistic indulgence. When Munro and his men are ambushed by Magua’s war party. Cora is attacked and about to have her throat slashed. Hawkeye spots her and runs towards her, killing several men along the way in slow motion for what seems to take forever and reaches her long after she surely would have been actually killed. However, he gets to her just in time and dispatches her attacker. Studi remembers that during the filming of this scene there being a lot of racial tension between the actors playing the British troops and the Indian actors which also added to the intensity of the scene.

One of the most striking aspects of Mohicans is Dante Spinotti’s stunning cinematography. Mann constantly punctuates scenes with picturesque shots of the countryside: early morning fog gently rolling off a mountain range, a raging waterfall and fields of tall grass. Browns and mostly greens dominate the color scheme of this film. For the look of Mohicans, the director started with 19th century landscape painters like Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, chiaroscuro lighting, and 18th century portraits. It was Bierstadt's paintings that influenced the look of the film "in terms both of compositions and of what the place looked like," Mann has said. As he progressed, however, he realized that "objective reality outstripped me, and I brought it back to a more conservative palette. If you were an American Indian and grew up in the forest, so all you saw were brown and green."

Even more so than The Keep (1983), Mohicans feels the most un-Mann-like of any of his films. His usual iconography is subdued or non-existent. Mohicans tries to counter many of the Native American stereotypes in Hollywood films. Hawkeye is completely aligned with the Native Americans while falling in love with Cora, a white woman. Initially, the racial distinction is blurred as Hawkeye is not given priority at the beginning of the film. They are all equal for a little while. Of course, being the star, Hawkeye does become the central focus of the story. This is where Mann’s film stops being progressive and reverts back to the old stereotypes with good and bad Native Americans. While he does up the ante in terms of realistic battle scenes, his story is very middle of the road and one that typifies a big-budget Hollywood film.

Mann had long been fascinated by the period of history that Mohicans is set in but his interest in the project can be traced all the way back to his childhood. He saw the 1936 version starring Randolph Scott as Hawkeye when he was four or five-years-old at a church in his neighborhood that would show 16mm films in their basement. Mann remembered “the corollary tragedy of Uncas and Alice at the end, plus I remember the fearsomeness of Magua, and the uniqueness of the period.”

Mann first acquired the rights to Philip Dunne's 1936 screenplay of The Last of the Mohicans and wrote a story outline based on it, the Smithsonian’s 30-volume North American Indian Handbook, a diary by Bouganville, Montcalm’s aide, and Simon Schama’s essay The Many Deaths of General Wolfe in 1988. He walked into the offices of Joe Roth, then Chairman of 20th Century Fox, and Roger Birnbaum, then President of Worldwide Production, and pitched a realistic take on Mohicans. They liked the idea and green-lit the project. Marketing surveys for 20th Century Fox revealed that few moviegoers had read Cooper’s novel but were familiar with the title.

As always, Mann did a lot of research on this period of history. He realized how “revisionist James Fenimore Cooper was in 1826 when he was revising [the perception of American Indians] into noble savages [who had] their life, their culture, their territory, their commerce, who [did not] need more sophisticated folks (like Cooper and his family), to look after their interests and their land. So, it was eye-opening to do the research on the Mohicans and get to the true dimensionality of that society.” From there, Mann constructed the outer frame of the film and established “the scale of a geopolitical conflict – the ethnic and religious conflicts, the struggle of white imperialism on a grassroots level, the condition of the struggle for survival of the colonial population, and the struggle between the Euramerican and European powers and the American Indian population.” Mann studied the history of the American frontier, read diaries from the time period and consulted with historians. For the director, “the details make this movie ring true. Audiences today are more visually sophisticated. They know the real deal, and they know when they’ve been shortchanged.”

Mann was interested in developing the epic scale of the story and proceeded to juxtapose these elements with an intimate love story between Hawkeye and Cora Munro. It is this coupling that illustrates where Mann deviates from Cooper's book in specific areas. Cora was originally a mulatto and Colonel Munro wanted Heyward to marry Cora but he preferred Alice. Mann switched it so that Hawkeye and Cora fall in love and had sex. Originally, Hawkeye’s name was Natty Bumppo but Mann felt that it was “kind of a silly name” and changed it to Nathaniel Poe. He also based Major Heyward on Cooper himself.

Mann wanted acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis to play Hawkeye, which the studio was less than thrilled about. Mann remembers, “The choice I got the weirdest reaction to was when I said Daniel Day-Lewis was going to be Hawkeye in Last of the Mohicans. Because American studios didn’t know him. They said, ‘You mean that skinny guy? That short, skinny guy in a wheelchair?’ Because all he had done was My Left Foot.” His co-star Madeleine Stowe remembers that prior to doing the film Day-Lewis had just played Hamlet at the National Theatre in London and ran from the stage crying, convinced that he was talking to the ghost of his own dead father. She felt a lot of uncertainty from him until he got into the physicality of his character, then he appeared to be very confident. According to Mann, physicality is one of the important ways Day-Lewis arrived at his character’s emotional state. Day-Lewis is good as a no-nonsense Mann protagonist but, at times, his alpha male bravado veers dangerously close to John Wayne territory. He certainly looks the part with his impressive lean, muscular physique – a radical change from his role in My Left Foot (1989) – and is more than up to the task for film’s demanding action sequences.

Stowe’s agent got her to read the script for Mohicans but the actress thought that, “it was a nice action picture, I didn’t feel any particular affinity for either Cora nor the story.” Her initial reluctance to the material was based on her dissatisfaction with action films. “I was fed up with them and I initially thought that the script was just another action film dressed up as a period piece.” Stowe’s agent kept after her and she read it two more times before meeting with Mann. They talked about the film and he told her his vision of it. A week later, Stowe met with Mann again and read with Day-Lewis and Steven Waddington. That day she found out that it was Day-Lewis who had suggested to Mann that she play Cora.

Casting director Bonnie Timmerman called Russell Means and asked him if he would be interested in trying out for a major role in a major film. However, the day they wanted him to audition, he was going to a political convention in Monterrey. They worked it out so that Means could do both. However, on the day he ended up missing the audition. He got another call from Mann who asked Means to audition for a role in the film. Means remembers that Mann “had been a documentary filmmaker during the 60's and 70's and he remembered the American Indian Movement, and Dennis Banks and myself as leaders.” After four auditions, Means was cast as Chingachook.

Mann brought in Colonel David Webster, who was in charge of the Many Hawks Special Operations Camp out of Fort Bragg in Columbus, Ohio, to train the cast for a month. In addition, Day-Lewis did an extraordinary amount of research and preparation for his role. Mann sent him on a six-month course of body building and weapons training at an anti-terrorist camp followed by several weeks in the wild learning how to survive with very little. He learned to track and skin animals, build canoes, fight with tomahawks, and fire and reload twelve pound flintlocks on the run. He spent five times a week for six months training to build up his stamina and upper body. Mann and Day-Lewis actually lived in the forests of North Carolina – Mann for a week, Day-Lewis for a month. The actor spent most of his time with experts on the lives and skills of American Indians.

Mohicans started with a budget of $24 million and a 250-member crew. Other articles reported that the budget was around $33 or $40 million. The principal photography was set for two-and-half months in the forests of North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains during the Spring of 1991. Mohicans would continue Mann's uncompromising approach to controlling every aspect of the production. He leveled hills, cleared 38 acres of trees and hired 130 carpenters to build Fort Henry. To achieve the authenticity of the period everything had to be built from scratch, including designing and manufacturing the breechcloths of six different Indian peoples and building French and English ordinance.

The grueling grind of the production took its toll. The Unit Production Manager and the Transportation Director were fired. All the original department heads, with the exception of the head of sound, quit. In perhaps the most startling move, cinematographer Douglas Milsome was fired and Mann brought in his favorite director of photography, Dante Spinotti. According to Means, this angered people in the film industry and Mohicans paid for it at the Academy Awards. The non-Union crew wanted to be a Union one and went on strike a day before principal photography was supposed to start. The studio ultimately gave into their demands.

While filming at Lake James, all the American Indian extras organized themselves and went on strike because their living conditions were awful and, according to Stowe, were not being well fed. There was one bathroom for 400 extras. Actors Eric Schweig, Means, and Day-Lewis joined the extras on the picket line. Military advisor Dale Dye organized the men playing the Red Coats in the film with the intention of breaking through the strike line. As they approached Means punched the first Red Coat and knocked him down. The rest of them scattered. Dye was able to get them reorganized and then the producers stepped in and asked Means to mediate between the two sides. In Means' opinion, the awful living conditions for the American Indian extras were the fault of the assistant directors. "Michael Mann was so focused on his art that he didn't realize what his A.D.s were doing ... and what his A.D.s did was effectively demoralize everyone."

When asked about the film’s production problems Mann said, “What I will tell you, however, is that this was a really difficult picture. You warn people ahead of time that this is going to be a tough picture to do, and people say, "That's fine, I can handle that," and sometimes they can't.” The filmmaker made no apologies for his exacting attention to detail. "Everything impacts on an audience. Everything. And you can either pay attention to it or let it go and let technicians do it. To me that's wasteful." Mohicans was originally slotted for a July release but was pushed back to September to avoid stiff competition and for a better position for Academy Award nominations.

The studio marketing department promoted Mohicans as a love story in a war zone, but Mann felt that it was about human struggle, “where life is short and passion is where you can find it; you are part of a people who are disappearing and the world is changing around you.” Means was not happy with how 20th Century Fox handled the film. He had two problems with the studio. Firstly, he claims that the studio forced Mann to cut down his original version that ran two hours down to 108 minutes removing “some very pertinent scenes in there, and dialogue, that would have shown the Indians in an even better light then it already does.” Secondly, Means said that the studio targeted the over 35 crowd, selling it as a love story. “As you know, it was kind of gory and there was a lot of action. So, if they'd have pitched it to 20/35 crowd, as their primary audience, it not only would have made another 50 million off of that ... 20th Century Fox shot themselves in the foot over that film ... A classic like that and they messed around with it. It just goes to point up in Hollywood they don't know anything about Indians nor the audience that they purport to know everything about.”

According to Stowe, the studio “had huge doubts” about the film during the editing and audience test screenings who were put off by the film’s violence. She felt that Mann was under a lot of pressure from the studio to change the film. The actress saw a cut in July of 1992 and felt that the studio was wearing Mann down so she called Joe Roth and “told him how beautiful the film was, and that I was fully ready to support it, that Michael’s work was wonderful and I imagined that Daniel would feel the same. he listened quietly and read between the lines.” Mann met with the studio again and successfully fought for his cut of Mohicans.

The Last of the Mohicans was released on September 25, 1992 in 1,491 theaters grossing $10.9 million on its opening weekend. It went on to make $75 million in North America, well over its $40 million budget. In his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert felt that Mann’s film was “not as authentic and uncompromised as it claims to be – more of a matinee fantasy than it wants to admit -- but it is probably more entertaining as a result.” Peter Travers, in his review for Rolling Stone, praised Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance: “The lithe Day-Lewis, more puckish than primitive despite the shoulder-length locks, is riveting. Luckily, he and the radiant Stowe can make the cornball credible – even a farewell scene at a waterfall where he vows to find her again, ‘no matter how long it takes, no matter how far.’” David Ansen also praised Day-Lewis’ performance in his review for Newsweek magazine: “This amazingly graceful actor builds his character out of body language ... He turns this 18th century action hero into a freshly imagined romantic icon ... Day-Lewis makes the most wildly heroic gesture seem natural.”

In his review for the Washington Post, Desson Howe wrote, “Whether there's a full-scale massacre of innocents, or a lover's kiss behind a raging waterfall, the movie is all expertly controlled sensation ... The battles are pyrotechnical displays of cannon fire and gleaming redcoats. Even the awesome landscape looks designed. Mann wasn't thinking story, he was thinking scheme. Keep the eyes and ears dazzled, he reasons, and the substance will follow.” Richard Schickel, in his review for Time magazine, wrote, “Above all Mann has seen to it that something spooky, suspenseful or just plain action packed happens every five minutes. In the process, he has eliminated the last traces of Cooper’s high-viscosity prose and sentiments.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “B+” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “And Mann has created a great villain in Magua, the vengeful Huron. Wes Studi, who was in Dances With Wolves, has a glowering face, all scars and furrows, that seems to be imploding with rage. At the same time, he reveals that the furious Magua is actually a thoughtful, complex man; he sees what the Europeans are doing to his people, and he despises them for it.”

The success of Mohicans not only established Mann with box office clout in the eyes of Hollywood, it also proved to be a hit with audiences and critics. More importantly, it paved the way for his next and even greater film, Heat (1995), a pet project that had been gestating for years.

Here is a clip from one of the film's exciting battle scenes:

Michael Mann Week: Thief

Continuing on with Michael Mann Week here at Radiator Heaven, I am proud to host an excellent post about Thief, by Tommy Salami who runs the always entertaining and well-written blog, Pluck You, Too!!!

"I am the last guy in the world that you wanna fuck with."

The first movie by Michael Mann that I watched was Thief, starring James Caan. I was young and unsure of why I liked it; it's grittiness, the technical aspect of the safe-cracking and high-end burglaries. The spellbinding soundtrack by Tangerine Dream. The complete lack of spoon-feeding or pandering to the audience.

The film opens with a man in listening to a police scanner in a parked car, while another in a jumpsuit hoists a huge drill to a safe and begins opening it. As the bit screws through the metal and reveals the workings inside, the camera zips in, and we watch the gears smashed to bits with a chisel. The cracker is masked with goggles, working diligently. He speaks to his quiet compatriots in quick staccato questions, utter minimalism. Another man works a bevy of volt meters on the security system. Quickly, diamonds are looted, they leave the scene with such precision that calling it "military" would seem insulting, and drive off in separate cars into the rain-puddled night streets.

With barely a word spoken, Mann has already gripped us. Audiences have always loved seeing criminals pull off a heist, and no frills are needed. With characteristic laconic style we're introduced to Frank the jewel thief's "normal life," owner of a car dealership. The perfect job for a criminal who sees civilians, those outside "the life," as marks and suckers. The entirety of the film is set in this shadow world, one we love to flirt with in the movies. And Mann, like Scorsese would in Goodfellas, perfectly portrays a world of villains who want to cobble together a life that mimics our boring suburban existence, while we go to movies to take a trip into theirs.

The film is partly based on the book The Home Invaders: The Confessions of a Cat Burglar by Chicago jewel thief Frank Hohimer. "Frank" was the pen name of real-life crook Jean Seybold, who served as a consultant on the set along with John Santucci, another thief who also played the crooked cop Urizzi. The book is set mostly in the '50s and '60s, so the movie modernized the criminal techniques, and changed Frank's modus operandi; instead of a home invader stealing rich women's jewelry collections, he seems to strike jewel distribution houses. This was a wise choice, for it anonymizes the victim and makes it easier for us to like Frank. In the book, he was often holding homeowners at gunpoint for the safe combinations, and the author was long suspected of taking part in the murder of Valerie Percy, daughter of an Illinois Senator. Not quite as glamorous. But the best parts of the book make it to the screen.

Their fence gets whacked by the mob before they get paid; this and continual police harassment by crooked cops wanting a bite of the take lead Frank to consider mobbing up with crime boss Leo, played by Robert Prosky. Like the real crime boss Leo Rugendorf, he doesn't look the part, but is a ruthless autocrat who uses people up and throws them away when he's done with them. Frank doesn't want to join, because he cares about nothing, and that makes him impossible to pressure or hurt. But soon, he will.

Michael Mann's films often figure on men with a personal code of ethics that leads to their downfall, and Thief is no different. Frank feels a great personal debt to his mentor Okie, based on a real jewel thief who taught Seybold the ropes in prison. He also wants to get back with his estranged girlfriend Jessie (Tuesday Weld) and have children. His feelings for them lead him to break his stringent code of working freelance. Okie is played by Willie Nelson; Mann continues to use musicians in small roles, and this is one of the best. Okie urges Frank to tell Jessie about his real profession. Lifted right from the book, he tells him "Lie to no one. If there 's somebody close to you, you'll ruin it with a lie. If they're a stranger, who the fuck are they you gotta lie to them?"

Okie is dying, and wants to spend one day on the outside; it's Frank's desire to pay back his mentor, and save a child lost in the juvie system like he was, that leads him to join Leo's crew. In the diner scene with Weld, we learn everything we need to know about Frank. Caan is known for his anger in the Godfather, but his vulnerability in this scene is palpable. It sets the tone for the film's grand ending. He explains that you can only be fearless when you care about nothing. This would later transform into Neil McCauley's more Zen-like "when the heat's around the corner" ethos in the epic Heat. DeNiro would also take his Yojimbo-like simplicity of action and clear speech from Frank. His desire for a normal life. Frank's a tough as nails man; we've seen him stare down mobsters and pull his .45, but his weakness, his desire to have a family with his wife cuts through all that, and makes him seem almost like a young boy.

As he plans the job for Leo, he begins to reap the benefits. A new house. Strings pulled to get his mentor Okla released due to his age and health. A baby adopted, despite his 10 year conviction. Frank's background as a juvenile delinquent makes him yearn to save an orphaned child from the same fate. He says, "I was state raised! You see 8 by 4 green walls long enough, you tell 'em "my life is yours!" Reminiscent of Andrew Vachss's Burke character, Caan embodies the hard-edged, serious ex-con who values every second of his time outside prison. Caan explains in the DVD commentary, "I don't use a single contraction in the entire film." This makes Frank feel like a man who doesn't say anything he doesn't mean to the core of his being. "If you don't use contractions, you are less likely to be misunderstood. You never have to repeat yourself."
It was filmed in Mann's hometown of Chicago and laden with its locations and jazz; many of the best jewel snatching crews of the time came from Chicago, specifically the Smith Park neighborhood called "the Patch." He used his connections to consult with real professional thieves and Chicago police; Dennis Farina was ex-Chicago PD, and though he barely says a word- something bizarre to imagine, for an actor who'd become so memorable for his outbursts- his presence helps add gritty realism to Mann's style. For example the attention to detail with the firearms- Frank uses an expensive custom long slide .45; Dennis Farina carries a rare HiStandard bullpup semi-auto shotgun, which really can fire as fast as it does. It's not quick cuts of a single shot, it's all 5 shells when he teaches Frank a lesson. James Caan was sent to Jeff Cooper's Gunsite Ranch for two days to go through combat pistol training; you can see it in his rigid isosceles shooting stance.
The centerpiece of the film is the West Coast heist, based on a real job pulled by consultant Joe Santucci. The planning takes weeks, beginning with procuring the "oxy lance" that will be used to cut a door in the front of the custom built safe. All the tools are real, and the first safe we see Caan crack was purchased for him to make his bones on. Even when they pull the cylinder out of a door lock, you can recognize the buster they use, if you've ever needed a locksmith. The oxygen lance is real as well, requiring fire extinguishing foam all over the set to keep the sparks from igniting everything. We get a welder's mask view of the door melting under its 6,000 degree barrage. It's oddly beautiful, a sparkle shower of diamonds, like the loot inside.
Santucci also plays Sgt. Urizzi, one of the crooked cops who shakes Frank down with a relish that only someone who's been on the other side of such a conversation can have. He's the guy Frank continually taunts, mistaking his Italian heritage for Puerto Rican.

You're a stand-up guy. You're a real stand-up guy. You got a mouth, you can take a trimming. You could make things easy for everybody. But no. You gotta be a goof. You're real good. No violence. Strictly professional. I'd probably like you. I'd like to go to the track, ball games. Stuff like that, you know? Frank, there's ways of doing things that round off the corners, make life easy for everybody. What's wrong with that? There's plenty to go around. We know what you take down. We know you got something major coming down soon. But no, you gotta come on like a stiff prick. Who the fuck do you think you are? What's the matter with you? You got something to say or are you waiting for me to ask you to dance?

Even James Belushi is good here, lacking his later smart-ass demeanor and sneer, playing it very cool. Then again, the comic actor is surrounded by tough guys- ex-cons and ex-cops, and James Caan in a role that makes his iconic appearance as Sonny in The Godfather seem warm and inviting. It was Belushi's first film, and the debuts of William Petersen, Dennis Farina, John Kapelos, and Robert Prosky; Farina would return in Mann's "Crime Story" TV series that made his career, and opened the door for "Miami Vice;" William Petersen would star in Mann's adaptation of Thomas Harris's Red Dragon, Manhunter.

The excellent Tangerine Dream soundtrack is what drew me back to this film in the 90's after I saw Heat. I still have it on vinyl; it's some of their best work, and "Confrontation," which plays over the final gunfight and end credits, is an electronic blues lament for a man who threw it all away so he could destroy the man holding his chain. The film is dedicated to Chicago bluesmen Willie Dixon and Mighty Joe Young, and the film does have the fleeting joy and inevitable sadness of a blues song. Young appears in the club scene where we first meet Jessie.
Tuesday Weld's role is easily overlooked, but she perfectly captures the moll look and attitude. In a film about men, we're reminded of James Brown's pearl of wisdom, "It's a man's world, but he made that world for woman." As soon as Frank and Jessie- and I'm sure naming the characters after the James Gang was no accident- hook up, he calls Leo and says he'll do a job for him. But he wants to play by his rules, and doesn't realize that in a Faustian bargain, only one guy sets the rules in the end.
There are three ranting monologues that give Alec Baldwin's infamous Glengarry Glen Ross "watch" speech a run for its money. When Frank comes out as a criminal to Jessie; When the crooked detective pulls Urizzi off him and tells him why he has to pay up to the cops, and when Leo tells Frank that he owns him, at his plating factory. This last particular scene is quite brutal and Mann films Leo's face upside down, as Frank sees it, passing on his disorientation to us.

Look. I said fuckin' look at 'im! Look at what happened to ya friend 'cause you gotta go against the way the things go down. You treat what I try to do for you like shit? You don't wanna work for me, what's wrong with you? And then, you carry a piece, in my house! You one of those burned-out demolished wackos in the joint? You're scary, because you don't give a fuck. But don't come onto me now with your jailhouse bullshit 'cause you are not that guy, dont'chu get it, you prick? You got a home, car, businesses, family, n' I own the paper on ya whole fuckin' life. I'll put ya cunt wife on the street to be fucked in the ass by niggers and Puerto Ricans. Ya kids mine because I bought 'it. You got 'im on loan, he is leased, you are renting him. I'll whack out ya whole family. People'll be eatin' 'em in their lunch tomorrow in their Wimpyburgers and not know it. You get paid what I say. You do what I say, I run you, there is no discussion. I want, you work, until you are burned-out, you are busted, or you're dead... you get it? You got responsibilities - tighten up n' do it. Clean this mess up, get 'im outta here. Back to work, Frank.

And to punctuate things, they dump a body in the nitric acid tanks of the electroplating factory. Mann has since trimmed his dialogue down, but he's also made his stories a lot tighter. Thief is sometimes a bit too obvious, and too quick; as soon as Frank signs up with Leo, he's walking streets paved with gold. And while his grittiness is solidified, his style is not yet in full flower. Frank's immediate coldness as he disassembles everything he once cared about is almost too much to bear. The slow-motion explosions may lack panache, but the lack of dialogue as he destroys it all is perfect. The sequence is still one of the most memorable of the film, as Frank writes large his Zen koan about your possessions owning you in fire across the screen. When he confronts Leo at his home, he is a man with nothing; he has thrown Jessie out of his life, and burned everything he owns.
The final confrontation is as brutal and stylized as that of Taxi Driver, as Frank's singularity of purpose makes him a swift instrument of vengeance. We don't get a single word from him; he does what he must do, and Mann expertly shows and does not tell. There are little touches; Dennis Farina's character can't aim the bullpup shotgun after he's wounded; Frank wears a protective vest, and tears his shirt to take a look at how it worked. And when it's over, he walks silently into the night, down the lonely road he finds himself on again. Will he go back to Jessie and his son? We don't know. Yet we are curiously satisfied, as the Tangerine Dream guitar lament drones through the speakers.
Thief is a singular film that portrays the life of the high-end burglar like no other. By peopling the movie with real thieves, real cops, and local Chicago characters, Mann made the outlandish story utterly believable and gripping. Mann's style mirrors the blues- a man with nothing, who has something, has it taken away, and sacrifices everything to get it back. The screen is a black night canvas painted with neon, the flash of diamonds and the electric burn of a welder's torch, with only brief respites on the sunny beach of San Diego after the score. We visit a world of rocks glasses amber with bourbon, meet night people who come home as the sun rises, who steal riches while we sleep, and get to know an ice cold thief who knows the only way to survive on your own in that world is to have nothing.
Mann would go on to more epic tales, but would always return to the American archetype of the lone killer, the man with his code. Hawkeye; Marlowe; the Man with No Name. It's no mistake that Michael Mann would direct The Last of the Mohicans, which has a long shadow over American literature with the iconic character of Hawkeye. Frank was the mold from which Neil McCauley was made, but you'll see the same obsession in Will Graham, Jeffrey Wigand in The Insider, Sonny Crockett of Miami Vice, Mike Torello of Crime Story, and even in his biopic of Ali. Heat and Manhunter- and certainly Public Enemies with the Dillinger/Purvis face-off- show how similar cops and crooks are, but Thief is the one purely from the crook's point of view, where there are no good guys. His next film in development, Frankie Machine, is based on a novel by Don Winslow (full review) is a mob picture starring DeNiro as a retired hitter dragged back into the life, when he'd rather surf the morning waves and run his bait shop. Another perfect Mann protagonist, he has old school values and has to ram them through the throats of some new blood who won't let sleeping dogs lie. I'm pumped to see some '30s gangster action next weekend, but I wouldn't mind seeing DeNiro stop treading water and work with a director like Mann again.