This Friday sees the release of a new film from director Michael Mann.
This upcoming feature is titled Blackhat and while it
does not offer a whole lot that we have not seen before, both in terms of story
and in what Michael Mann is capable of as a director, it does continue a trend
that I love seeing in films from directors like Mann, who frequently commit to
sprawling films that feature many speaking roles: the use of a ton of character
actors. Using the past few decades as an example, Mann fits with
directors such as Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Steven Soderbergh, and Martin
Scorsese, among a number of others, as well as producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who
have made films that not just have a lot of characters, but seem to fill all
the roles with character actors and familiar faces that were either in the
early stages of their careers or are just reliably good. With that in
mind (and an understanding that I have now set myself up to revisit this topic
with other directors in the future), I wanted to have a little fun spotlighting
some key performances in all of Michael Mann's films (minus The Keep,
as I just do not have a way to see it and Mann disowns it, so...). In
particular, it would be fun to go into the real minor roles, but I'll see how I
do, given how I had only so much time to revisit Mann's filmography.
Anyway, let's see how this goes, as I wanted to do something different
than just rank Mann's movies.
.jpg)
