If it is true, as Jean Renoir said, that a director makes only one movie, then Michael Mann makes the one I don’t just want to watch, it’s the one I want to live in. Perhaps you have seen it: It is the story of the night and the city and the men who inhabit it — professionals to the core who operate on instinct, sometimes living inside the law, but more often indifferent to it. They will meet on rooftops or in desolate industrial expanses to suss out the terrain, plotting their next move, while the low rumble of an electric guitar sounds in the distance. Inevitably, there will come a woman, and with her the momentary illusion of a “normal” life. And just as inevitably, that hoped-for bliss will prove as out of reach as Proust’s dream of fair Albertine. This is not always the story, for Michael Mann has made a historical epic about the... More >>>