Collateral, by Michael Mann

A story that begins with a man on a mission to assassinate set against a man whose life is passing him by, because he never really stood up for himself.

A story that ends with a man who dies just as he’s realising where his mission has led him, but who doesn’t know how to stand down, killed by the hand of the man who showed him where that mission destroyed his personal choice. But the assassin who dies only died at the hand of that man, because he taught him how the assassin’s mind works.

And it made me cry... tears at the scene when he dies. And it’s made me cry before… again, tears at the scene when he dies...

…when I saw my first Michael Mann film, Heat.

A story that begins with man on a mission to pull heists set against a man whose life is passing him by, because he’s committed to hunting murderers.

A story that ends with a man who dies at the just as he’s realising he has to escape the mission he’s spent his life committed to, but who refuses to stand down, killed by the hand of the man who showed him what life could be if he ended his mission. But the heister who died only died at the hand of that man, because he taught him how the heister’s mind works.

In them both, there are so many similarities, not just the central theme. The denoument of both unveils the driving forces of the two central characters, and how those forces are unbalanced by their interaction with each other. And he unravels this showing strengths and weaknesses in both men, blurring the edges of the standard good guy / bad guy relationship, by illustrating more of an insight.

And at the same time, there’s the third central character: the city of LA.

Michael Mann films predominantly at night.

When he wants you to relate to the central characters, you see one character close up, in the left or right hand side of the shot, and behind them but as predominant as that face, will be the LA landscape – as if a central character.

It could be an attempt at bringing the way you view the world into the picture… when you speak to someone, you focus on their face, but at the same time your attention will focus intermittently at the landscape behind, so you recall both elements of your eye’s focus.
In film, Michael Mann evokes this by keeping both the character’s face and the landscape in focus at the same time, using the night light to accentuate each element. It often results in the viewer seeing it as “fabulous cinematography” (which it is), but it also draws you in to focus on the character’s faces further to glean an insight into their minds (the films’ central theme).