Mann’s eye for texture, after the mishap of Public Enemies, comes back in full force, his digital photography a perfect fit for the film's incomprehensible-on-purpose digital plot. Ali is, mostly, the filmmaker rope-a-doping himself.ĭespite Blackhat‘s reputation as a critical and financial failure, there’s a ton about the sublimely absurd, globe-trotting hacker-action-thriller that I can get down with. Mann has applied his aesthetics to more traditional, prestige genres before and come up quite successful. And when Smith is forced abruptly into more traditionally written and staged “biopic scenes” (Ali and his dad fight! Ali says quotes we all know and love! Ali triumphs in the Rumble in the Jungle!), it feels less like a breath of fresh air and more like another bafflingly obtuse decision from Mr. Smith seems to be deciding to show no emotion in his face when playing Ali - the moments of performance that do pop (like a lovely winter-set scene late in the picture) pop because Smith allows himself to actually emote and tap into what makes him naturally effective as a performer. But his take on the icon both reaches counterintuitively toward a sketch-like impression while also feeling strangely held back.
#THIEF 1981 MICHAEL MANN ARROW UK MOVIE#
He is, no joke, one of my all-time favorite movie actors, and the idea of him teaming up with Mann to depict Ali (who publicly endorsed Smith) excited me to no end. The word “reach” came to mind a lot while watching this film, especially in Smith’s performance. But if When We Were Kings cuts images to the bone, Ali cuts images and leaves a ton of meat, gristle, and fat - and then refuses to tell you what kind of meat it is. Mann stages a prolonged musical performance from Sam Cooke ( David Elliott) and cuts between lots of disparate, in media res moments from Ali’s life (again, starting the picture rapidly in media res is a trick Mann does in other films to much better effect). The opening 25ish minutes of Ali, in particular, borrow some of the wild, fast-paced usage of montage and music from When We Were Kings - just with a lot less clarity, purpose, and immediate context. In some ways, Michael Mann’s Ali, starring an Oscar-nominated Will Smith in the title role, plays like the famous documentary on the man When We Were Kings (a film you should watch if you want to know more about Ali), but, like, if When We Were Kings were stretched out into a moody, ambient-leaning slow motion. Public Enemies is a fling off the dartboard and thensome.ĭo you want to know more about Muhammad Ali, the world-famous boxer and social activist? I think I would recommend that you not watch Alias a starting point. All of these facets and more are used by Mann regularly to much better effects. Mann's visual swath of "boring, ugly cinematography," combined with the performers' muted work, combined with its aggravating reliance on realistic procedure over human drama, sidesteps all of that intrigue in favor of something much more dubious. The era Mann is covering was full of passion, jazz, and the tantalizingly ambiguous deification of flamboyant criminals. Mann's images, rendered by his usual DP Dante Spinotti, are flattened, desaturated, cheap-looking, bleary, and during the action sequences, literally painful to watch. But Public Enemies, the first film Mann made entirely digitally, does not, hard. Some of Mann's experiments with this style of filmmaking work like gangbusters (we'll get to those later). Instead, Mann used gnarly, grimy, grainy HD photography with digital cameras that couldn't care less about looking like any standard Hollywood picture. But unlike other digital photography pioneers of this era (your James Camerons, your Robert Rodriguezes), Mann wasn't interested in replicating the look of film.
The film, released in 2009, represents the absolute creative nadir of Mann's 2000s obsessions and experiments with digital cinematography. In practice? More like a half-court three that accidentally hits the mascot. All of this, on paper, sounds like a slam dunk for Mann. Hot on Dillinger's heels? The buttoned-up FBI agent Melvin Purvis ( Christian Bale), acting under orders by an increasingly single-minded J. The film tells the true story of John Dillinger ( Johnny Depp), a notorious bank robber who captured the hearts and imaginations of the public in 1930s Chicago - especially jazz singer Billie Frechette ( Marion Cotillard). Yikes! Jeepers! And fully, woof! Public Enemiesis likely Mann's only out-and-out dog, a morose, cold, visually ugly piece of filmmaking that seems perversely uninterested in any traditional facets of a period gangster drama, to its own severe detriment.
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