Tonight’s Triple Feature is a director spotlight on Michael Mann, a filmmaker who has built his career around professionals under pressure and the costs of living by codes.
We begin with Ferrari (2023) — a film Mann spent decades trying to make. Starring Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari, the movie takes place in the summer of 1957, when Ferrari’s company was facing bankruptcy, his marriage was crumbling, and the infamous Mille Miglia race loomed large. It’s not just a biopic but a portrait of obsession: the relentless drive to build something lasting, even as personal and public tragedies pile up.
From there we move to Heat (1995), Mann’s defining crime epic. Al Pacino plays Vincent Hanna, an LAPD detective, while Robert De Niro plays Neil McCauley, a career thief. Both men are at the top of their respective crafts, and both are consumed by their work to the point of personal ruin. The film’s legacy is monumental—praised for its authenticity, its attention to detail in portraying criminal life, and of course, the first face-to-face meeting of Pacino and De Niro on screen.
Finally, we close with Collateral (2004), a lean, modern thriller shot largely on digital cameras when that technology was still new. Tom Cruise plays Vincent, a contract killer who hires Jamie Foxx’s cab driver, Max, to ferry him around Los Angeles during a night of assassinations. It’s a film about chance encounters, moral choices, and the ways ordinary lives are disrupted by the professional ruthlessness of others.
Together, these films illustrate Mann’s enduring obsessions: characters defined by their craft, stories where professionalism is both armor and curse, and worlds where the pursuit of excellence isolates people from human connection. Whether it’s a race car mogul, a master thief, or a contract killer, Michael Mann’s protagonists live—and often die—by the codes they set for themselves.
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