THROUGH A SCREEN DARKLY
A Mann's WorldPublic Enemies director Michael Mann often blurs the line between the good guys and the bad in the moral crossfire between cops and robbers.Jeffrey Overstreet | posted 6/30/2009 08:43AM
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Editor's note: "Through a Screen Darkly," a monthly commentary by CT Movies critic Jeffrey Overstreet, explores films old and new, as well as relevant themes and trends in cinema. The column continues the journey begun in Overstreet's book of the same name.
When the name Michael Mann appears at the front of a movie—as it does before Public Enemies, opening this week—you know you're in for a heat wave. And probably a crime wave too.
Mann on the 'Public Enemies' set
Mann loves to turn up the temperature. His films follow fevered individuals pushing back against "the Man"—that is, the oppressor. The establishment. The forces that would make one conform to a program. And in that friction between the corporation and the Individual with a Vision, things turn violent.
Sometimes the individual is a brave and moral hero caught in the crossfire of corrupt forces. Think of Will Graham (William Petersen), the unconventional FBI specialist tracker in Manhunter; Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis) in The Last of the Mohicans; or Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) on a crusade for truthful journalism in The Insider.
Sometimes that hero is not quite so admirable. Lieutenant Vincent Hannah (Pacino) in Heat wreaks havoc on the lives of those dear to him in his furious pursuit of bank robbers. And both Crockett and Tubbs of Miami Vice—the television series that brought Michael Mann to fame, and the movie that paired Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx—make moral compromises all the time in their single-minded quest to bring down drug lords.
And sometimes—as in Mann's new movie Public Enemies—the "hero" is almost 100 percent criminal, pursuing his vision in defiance of the law. Like The Joker, John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) pursues an ambitious and violent agenda, laughing as he exposes the flaws in the forces that pursue him.
Thus, Mann is an auteur preoccupied with an obvious theme: Single-minded men, and their struggle to do their particular job—whether ethical or unethical—with their own particular methods and style, without buckling under the pressure to conform. His heroes, whether cop or robber, declare, "I'm gonna do it my way."
No wonder he made a movie about Muhammad Ali.
Each of these characters may as well be speaking for Mann himself, whose movies are distinct, personal, and sometimes, yes, a little too criminal in nature.
Does "Cop vs. Robber" Equal "Right vs. Wrong"?Public Enemies is as slick, polished, and loaded as the heavy artillery that Dillinger and his gang assemble before any of their professional bank robberies in this twenty-one-gun salute to films about cops and robbers. It delivers all of the conventions we've come to expect from great movies about bank heists, manhunts, and 1930s crime, but at the same time it turns the genre upside down.
While we're watching a story about FBI chief Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) on a quest to hunt down Dillinger, Mann pulls the same stunt he did in what is arguably his masterpiece, 1995's Heat. He blurs the lines between "good guys" and "bad guys," finding something admirable in Dillinger's genius, and something appalling in Purvis's steel trap of justice.
Ultimately, we're meant to see that there isn't much separating the robber on the run from the cops on his trail. As you watch Public Enemies, consider the two titans caught up in the clash. Both take terrible risks to achieve what they want. Both leave a bloody wake of "collateral damage." Both are out to prove to the world that they cannot be outdone. Both make choices that seem morally reprehensible.
At the end of Heat, Collateral, and Public Enemies, the wages of sin do eventually punish the crooks. But they punish the do-gooders too. In Heat, Lieutenant Hanna has suffered harrowing trials at home due to his neglect of his family. We're left asking: Was it worth it? Was Hanna's furious pursuit of Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) worth the damage done to his loved ones?
The question is timely and relevant. When J. Edgar Hoover [Billy Crudup] announces at the beginning of Public Enemies that he is beginning the United States of America's "first war on crime," the vocabulary reminds us of what has become a household term: "the war on terror."
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