Michael Mann

Mark Kermode writes that in The Insider Michael Mann resisted the easy course of simplifying his material, and takes that as confirmation that he is among the most important and most intelligent directors at work in mainstream cinema. Kermode points to a continuity as well, the paradoxically intimate use of the wide screen in that film being an extension of what Heat had displayed. Three further pieces put his name to work measuring other people: one ties a technique directly to him and holds that in another director's hands it neutralises the effect, while another names the mythic-narcissistic hero as the type he favours.