INTERPRETATION
Michael Mann's films aren't for everyone; his most recent release, Public Enemies has received mixed reviews. In fact, a former studio chairman who hadn’t seen the film said “it’s going to take itself too seriously, it’s going to be way too long and it will not focus on entertaining the audience.” He went on to say “Michael Mann, in the past 15 years, has not made one movie I’ve liked.”
And while most of his work, including Public Enemies falls into the crime genre, they are not the typical 95-minute action movies that “focus on entertaining the audience,” per se. This is why I like his films. Detractors call Mann’s work slow; I call it deliberate. After all, instead of a non-stop sequence of people running around doing things, isn’t it sometimes interesting to know who the characters are and, more importantly, why they make certain choices?
Michael Mann explores certain recurring themes in his work, and I find the most interesting of these to be the notions of individual and collective “professionalism” that often define both the protagonists and antagonists in his films. He avoids fixating on the more virtuous notion of honor (except, perhaps, in The Last of the Mochicans) and the black-and-white separation of “good guys” and “bad guys” such morality creates. Instead he prefers to operate in shades of gray and blur the line between good and bad. If a thief is extremely effective at his trade and behaves professionally, is he to be any less respected than the cop whose life’s work is chasing him?
Many of Mann's films deal with this notion of professionalism and each film seems to examine it in a different context or way. Public Enemies and, in particular, Heat feature a protagonist and antagonist who both behave professionally, although, as Mann puts it, one is a sociopath and one is not. In Collateral, Tom Cruise stars as a hitman who is perhaps an archetypical example of this notion of professionalism. His character is contrasted by the cab driver, played by Jamie Foxx, who drives him around during the movie. The Insider, for which Mann received the most critical acclaim examines the intersection of ethics, integrity, and professionalism.