Michael Mann – the architect of crime

Emphasis on craft, no matter how morally questionable, the metropolitan jungle painted in neons and shadows, and unsettling, almost voyeuristic cinematography – that is the neo-noir thriller from the workshop of Michael Mann. His characters and plots still fit comfortably within the genre borders: thiefs and murderers meet their narrative mirrors in hard-boiled or at least very determined investigators in cat-and-mouse chases of almost philosophical dimensions. But there i salso the common John Doe, in a bad place and at a bad time, thrown into dangerous and unpredictable events. In the selection of Mann’s oeuvre offered in this programme section, we are not fogetting Collateral (2004), where on a regular Los Angeles night, a regular Loas Angeles cabbie Max gets tangled up with Vincent, his mysterious passenger. Naturally we also cannot leave out Mann’s iconic, almost three-hour clash of personalities embodied by detective Hanna and master thief McCauley in Heat (1995), which also gives us opportunity to remember the late Val Kilmer. Certain thematic and character parallels can be found in his older filmic sibling, Thief (1981). These hits are accompanied by the also impressive story of John Dillinger, played by Johnny Depp in Mann’s Public Enemies (2009) and also the director’s dip into cybercrime depicted in the possibly less known Blackhat (2015).