The Essentials: Michael Mann’s Best Films

“Ali” (2001)
Perhaps Mann’s most traditionally prestige-y type fare, “Ali” sees the great American documenter of professional life turn his eye to the ultimate self-styled American professional, boxer Cassius Clay, better known as Muhammad Ali, as played, in a role that’s still his finest hour, by megastar Will Smith. Documenting the tumultuous decade between 1964 and 1974 that goes from Clay’s heavyweight championship bout against Sonny Liston, through his awakening in the Nation of Islam and the changing of his name, to his refusal of the draft, to the Rumble In the Jungle against George Foreman in Zaire, it’s an ambitious affair, even for a near-3-hour runtime. But at least to begin with, it feels like Mann might have pulled it off: the opening, scored to Sam Cooke‘s “A Change Is Gonna Come,” is astonishing, and there’s a vivid energy to the following scenes that gives the impression that the filmmakers have hit on something very special, not least when anchored by a performance from Smith that uses every wattage of his charisma but lets him be Ali, not the Fresh Prince. But after the first act, things derail a little: the script, credited to four writers including Mann and “The Insider” ‘s Eric Roth, is unwieldy and overstuffed, ultimately falling prey to the biopic trap of trying to take on too large a chunk of its subject’s life. And Mann never quite feels as simpatico with the socio-political upheaval stuff as with the boxing scenes (which are as well shot as anything in the genre since “Raging Bull”—indeed, as Mann’s sole collaboration with the great Emmanuel Lubezki, it’s a reminder that while his digital experimentation has been welcome, his work has never looked as beautiful since he left 35mm behind). The film’s closest cousin is probably “Malcolm X,” and it’s hard to not wonder what Spike Lee could have done with the material. But still, there’s an awful lot to love here, from the killer soundtrack and rousing recreations of the Rumble In the Jungle, to the way Smith genuinely exposes a little of his subject’s soul, to fine supporting performances from Jamie Foxx, Jeffrey Wright and the Oscar-nominated Jon Voight, who pulls off a remarkable, prosthetics-aided facsimile of legendary commentator Howard Cosell. [B-]

“Collateral” (2004)
While Mann employed high-definition video cameras for select portions of “Ali” (yes really), he more extensively utilized the format for “Collateral,” a movie that served as his halfway point between the classical, shot-on-celluloid films of the early part of his career and the more experimental, extremely stylized movies (films seems to be the wrong word) of this current creative period. Here, while the digital photography seems fresh and oftentimes comes across as electrically alive, it still looks pretty crummy, and the digital stuff sitting side-by-side the traditionally photographed material (like the great sequence where Jamie Foxx goes into the Mexican dancehall to meet Javier Bardem‘s terrifying drug kingpin and the stuff in the jazz club) certainly doesn’t do it any favors. Still, Mann seems creatively reinvigorated by the use of the new format, with his sociological observations on Los Angeles resting comfortably inside a nifty genre contraption about a hitman (Tom Cruise, whose silver hair and equally silver suit suggest The Terminator more than anything else, and whose against-type performance here is among the very best of his career) who charters a taxi (driven by Foxx) as he goes on a nightlong killing spree. As impressive as the film’s technical aspects are, the performances and particularly the chemistry between Foxx and Cruise, in one of his only outwardly villainous roles, are where the movie’s heart truly lies. (There are a number of great blink-and-you’ll-miss-them supporting performances, including speaking roles essayed by Mann’s protégé Peter Berg, Mark Ruffalo, Jason Statham and Jada Pinkett-Smith.) “Collateral” isn’t perfect, with Mann having seemingly lost his grasp on his ability to choose appropriate music to go along with his impeccable images (what is that Audioslave song all about?) and it twists and turns satisfyingly only until it finally snaps our belief, but as a work of streamlined genre storytelling, it’s pretty unstoppable. Before the movie came out Cruise was fond of telling people that the script was so finely calibrated that you could tune a guitar to it. He’s not wrong. At the end of Mann’s occasionally brilliant, blood-splattered nighttime odyssey, it’s the characters that really matter, not the number of pixels. [B+]

“Miami Vice” (2006)
Michael Man’s most audacious experiment in recent memory, turning the beloved, colorful, highly stylized eighties cop drama “Miami Vice,” on which he originally served as an executive producer, into a vibrant, grainy, you-are-there contemporary thriller, ended up wildly divisive. But on our side of the fence, it’s a crackerjack piece of filmmaking that is maybe the sine qua non of late-period Mann aesthetics, tethered to a recognisably Mann’s-man’s-man plot (sorry). Colin Farrell plays Crockett, the character originally played by Don Johnson, and Jamie Foxx is his partner Tubbs (originally Philip Michael Thomas), two undercover cops who get in over their heads with an international drug ring. And while all the good stuff is there in the theatrical version of “Miami Vice,” which Mann wrote, directed, and produced, the expanded director’s cut, later released on home video, is a revelation. The expanded runtime allows both the labyrinthine mechanics of Mann’s crime narrative to take on the appropriate sprawl, and lets us spend more time with the characters, giving us more investment in the pair of doomed relationships that the detectives develop (with, in a move that still, sadly, seems way ahead of its time, a pair of non-white actresses—Gong Li and Naomi Harris). While very little of the original television show remains in the movie, aside from some of the fashions and an emphasis on those cigarette-like “go boats” that race off the coast, it’s still fun to play spot-the-reference, like the twinkly flourishes of John Murphy’s neato score or the inclusion of a cover of Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight,” which was memorably used in the series’ pilot. (Though, on the minus side, Mann’s baffling love of Chris Cornell continues; he uses two horrible Audioslave songs here.) The movie also features Mann’s deftest use of high-def digital photography, with everything taking on an added level of immediacy that borders on the splashily electric and gives the action sequences, many of which are amongst the best of Mann’s career, additional sizzle. It’s unclear whether or not Universal saw “Miami Vice” as the beginning of an adults-only franchise; as it stands it’s a one-off treat, and if perhaps it doesn’t exert the deeper thematic pull that the filmmaker at his very best can summon. It’s still, naysayers be damned (and seriously, revisit!), a smooth, jazzy late career triumph for one of Hollywood’s headiest action filmmakers. [B+]