![]() ![]() In that vein, Thief is more of a mission statement than an elementary foray into movies. Whatever else goes on, Mann’s thesis is devilishly simple: things never seem to work out, regardless how much rage, skill or weaponry he (always he) has. More often, it’s straightforwardly unjust: shadowy and conspiratorial in The Insider or Blackhat, impossibly futile in Heat or Thief, socially irreparable in Ali and The Last of the Mohicans. Yet Mann’s films aren’t frightening like Anderson’s, in large part because his protagonists don’t experience the world as a scary place. Specifically Leo, the Chicago mob boss who manages to counter his innate haplessness with abominably violent threats which include turning people into “wimpy burgers”. Lonesome and overly macho, maybe, but certainly not scary. The films of Michael Mann, and perhaps above all Thief, don’t function this way. ![]() “Anderson does such a good job of describing that perpetually alarmed feeling – the trucks literally roar by like Jurassic Park dinosaurs the warehouse door rolls up and down, blinding and blackening like the wrath of God”, she wrote. In her essay for the Criterion release of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love, writer and director Miranda July observed that a crucial aspect of the film’s atmosphere lies in its depiction of the world’s inherent scariness.
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