1992 - THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS - 11th remake of this story

Michael Mann known for his crime thrillers dusts off James Fenimore Cooper's story for another shot.  This time with more "open minded" attitudes about Native Americans the film seems to have a little more depth to it.  Anyway we meet Daniel Day Lewis who is constantly on the run thoroughout the film.  For a while this got to be a big joke with stand-up comedians.  Lewis is Cooper's famous character Natty Bumpo a man with a lot of alias's (Hawkeye, Pathfinder, and the Deerslayer).  The setting is the French/Indian war in American which ran about eight years I believe.  Bumpo is off to save the lives of two daughters of a British Colonel, of course he falls in love with one of them.

Daniel Day Lewis is the epitome of the movie star with his handsome looks and his clearly pumped up body.  His love interest is Madeline Stowe playing Cora Munro and their love scenes are bathed in either amber light of soft misty water from a waterfall. No question they are a very good looking couple.  There is also a sort of secondary love story between Natty Bumpo's adopted Native American brother Uncas who clearly is attracted to Cora Munro's sister Alice.  But nobody paid their money to watch a couple of supporting players fall in love, so their scenes are given pretty short shrift.

 

The battle scenes are quite exciting as is to be expected from Michael Mann.  The film was shot in North Carolina on some spectacular forest locations.  The soundtrack is epic and the photography from Dante Spinotti is excellent.

 

The film is very entertaining if a little to violent at times.  Christopher Crowe and Michael Mann wrote the screenplay the film runs either 112 minutes or 117 minutes or 114 minutes due to Michael Mann's tendency to constantly reedit his films after they are finished.

1981 - THIEF - outstanding crime drama.

Michael Mann at the peak of his abilities as a filmmaker with this film.  Thief is an excellent crime/noir film.  James Caan is a top professional thief trying to go straight and even adopt a more normal life as a married man with a family.  Tuesday Weld is his girlfriend/wife.  The actor Robert Prosky is the Chicago mob boss who thinks he has Caan under his thumb.

The film was photographed in Chicago with lots of Chicago actors.  The photography by Donald Thorin is very dynamic especially the night scenes.  Thorn did a lot of work in the 1980's and 90's but is probably his best effort.   

 

Besides Mann's stylish direction Thief has an interesting score by Tangerine Dream before they became kind of a music cliche.

 

Mann wrote the screenplay the film runs 123 minutes.

2015 - BLACKHAT, a techo thriller (whatever that is?)

 Usually a Michael Mann film is a rigorously made story with excellent visuals and tight controlled performances.  This film seems less effective than his previous efforts.  His lead Chris Hemsworth seems to restrained in the role of a brilliant computer hacker and frankly all the computer double speak he proclaims doesn't really help his performance.

The film follows some cyber criminals who plan to destroy a large dam in Malaysia by flooding that country's tin mines thereby raising the price of tin or something like that.  This just happens to be the same plot of the James Bond film A View To A Kill.

 

The compensations in this film are the action scenes which Mann films with his usual intensity and the on location filming in Asia.  Otherwise, the film is somewhat of a disappointment considering the talent involved.

Screenplay by Morgan Davis Foehl, running time 133 minutes.

2006 - MIAMI VICE. the movie

The film version of the trend setting (at least for a couple of years) TV cop show that was filmed on location in Miami.  The original executive producer Michael Mann directed the film in his usual meticulous style. As is the case with Mann the film has an amazing look to it.

Unfortunately the story that Mann constructed is a convoluted mess.  It has something to do with drug smuggling, a bunch of Neo Nazi's and lets face it a very boring love story between our cop hero Sonny Crockett and the CFO of the drug ring played by Chinese actor Gong Li.

 I think you have a problem with your film when the TV show has more interesting stories than the 132 minute big budget movie that the show turned into.  Mann is supposedly a tough guy to work for but from what I've read the film was plagued with production problems.  Apparently there was a hurricane to deal with during shooting and a lot of star temper tamtrums.

Still a very good looking dynamic film.  It could have used a few more action scenes.

1989 - LA TAKEDOWN is the exact same goddamn movie as "Heat"

I knew Michael Mann based his film Heat, on a TV movie he directed and wrote called LA Takedown. But I was hardly prepared for how closely he lifted scenes in Heat from that movie. Whole scenes appear to be duplicated right down to the camera movements.

 

At three hours, Heat is a very long and padded out crime film with interesting scenes stuck in between lots of boring stuff about the personal lives of the criminals and the cops chasing them. The TV movie LA Takedown simply eliminates all of those personal scenes and mostly concentrates on the crime story.

LA Takedown is so similar to Heat that Michael Mann even modulated the actors to give the same performance. You could swap Al Pacino and Scott Plank between films (playing the same character Lt. Vincent Hanna) and not even know the difference. Pacino was criticized for his over the top performance when Heat came out but Plank has the exact same eye rolling, shouting mannerisms as Pacino in LA Takedown.

 

Obviously Michael Mann REALLY liked this story.

 92 criminal minutes.