Mansur Ahmed

In July of 2009, Michael Mann’s newest film, Public Enemies, will be released starring Johnny Depp as John Dillinger. What a sentence that is. When some people think of Michael Mann they immediately get a picture of excess in style. This is a total misconception, although his film adaptation of Miami Vice serves as perfect evidence for that argument. I don’t believe Public Enemies will have the same problems as Miami Vice since the iconic status of John Dillinger and Melvin Purvis most certainly overtakes that of Crockett and Tubbs. We can be rest assured that Enemies is a return to the richly thematic world of Michael Mann as experienced in Heat. A central idea Mann runs with in his movies is that each person is a universe unto himself. An individual is all alone behind their eyes, alone with their thoughts, and alone in their journey through existence. In Heat we get two characters who are polar opposites: one is a criminal and one is the cop chasing him. The singular connection they share is each other, likewise it is very difficult for either of them to function in the world without consideration to what the other is up to. Robert De Niro’s character understands this very well, which is why he chooses to maintain a very dogmatic way of life. Al Pacino, on the other hand, does not possess the same rigidity and allows himself to invest emotions very explosively. He can handle the consequences because he is used to living that way. Robert De Niro’s character is the more interesting of the two, and when he turns weak enough to invest his emotions, even in just a minor capacity,  it throws his entire constitution out of whack and makes him vulnerable. And in the world of Michael Mann, where fate is rendered through a system of cause and effect in direct control of the characters, vulnerability is very dangerous.

Heat is like an opera, a mosaic with threads that branch out in all directions. We have cops, we have criminals, we have your ordinary citizens, but Michael Mann never makes a distinction between them in any moral capacity. He cuts away all the labels and definitions for his characters until we can’t even judge them in simple absolutes as good and bad. There is no good and bad, there’s just the decisions the characters make, either consciously or unconsciously, and the inevitable circumstances engendered from those choices. Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, despite being on opposite sides of the law, inherently deal with the same issues. In the end, I empathized more with De Niro even though he was the criminal who did despicable things. I felt sorry for him as a human being, and not under some cliched pretense he was just the wrong guy caught up in a life of crime. No, he made his choice. He was a criminal and there were no excuses for it. I felt sorry for him because of how vulnerable he became when he tried to pursue something that made him happy, and how that vulnerability was ultimately his downfall. His character is tragic.

Al Pacino is haphazard and freewheeling from the start. He’s a bigger mess than De Niro because he can afford to be. He thrives on the process of hunting his prey. It’s like a drug to him, and the effect of this addiction to the other figures in his life seems no different than if he were addicted to cocaine. Pacino forgoes anything in between him and his pursuit. He’s willing to destroy relationships over it, he’s willing to neglect his other responsibilities in trade for the elevated state he gets from chasing the bad guy. Pacino has just as much professionalism as De Niro, but De Niro has a bit more regard for his actions. He never gives off the impression he is enjoying the way he makes a living. It doesn’t give him a high, it’s just his calling in life. It’s what he does best, so he does it, but he can’t enjoy it because the structure of his existence is so fragile that any slip will cause it to be destroyed. But Al Pacino is on the right side of the law, which gives him a free pass for the near shameless joy provided by the thrill of being a cop. In this regard, I felt that Robert De Niro was a bit more self-aware than Al Pacino.

The best scene in the movie is when the two of them meet in a coffee shop. There are no guns, no fighting, just a conversation between two people who realize they are the most important person in either of their lives at the moment. Al Pacino, we can see, acquires a certain respect for Robert De Niro, so he gives him the warning, saying he’s going to take him down without hesitation should the time come. De Niro, in turn, respects him back. From there on out, everything is in his hands because no matter how hard Pacino and the police try, De Niro won’t be caught by them unless he lets it happen. Of course, that’s when he meets the girl, the girl who gets him to remove his armor. De Niro’s philosophy was to never get involved in something you couldn’t walk out on in 30 seconds flat should you find the heat around the corner. It’s the tagline for his whole Art of War-like philosophy. When he opens his emotions for the girl, he deviates from his systemic approach and the flurry of spontaneity and passion she derives from him winds up spilling over to all the choices he needs to make. By the time he recognizes how much he loves her and what it has done to him, he can no longer undo the interlacing strings of causality. That’s what it’s all about with Michael Mann. Not good, not bad, just the gray area where all we have are the decisions a person has made and the effects of those decisions. It usually comes down to that one particular choice, where if you go one way, everything is okay and safe, but if you go the other, from that point on, your life will never be the same. You will never be the same person. Your entire universe has transformed.