What is it about Michael Mann's films that beguiles a certain kind of male? Gadget-lover Donald Clarke 'fesses up to his inner Mann
Serious critics in serious publications - though some are men, some are women, some are socialists and more than a few are crypto-fascists - are required to pretend that neither age, race, gender, nor political allegiance play any part in their assessment of any particular work or artist.
Like many men of my age, I secretly believe that all films should aspire to the form of The Great Escape. But, on more than one occasion, cinema staff, fearful that I may be weeping myself into a coma, have had to help me into the foyer after the screening of some drippy sentimental drama. I may be 42 and blithely childless, but few characters in mainstream culture delight me as much as SpongeBob SquarePants. Despite my pale complexion and liberal temperament, I enjoy the films of right-wing outdoorsmen such as John Milius. And on it goes. Target demographic? I know not the meaning of the phrase.
Sadly, my resolve to frustrate categorisation collapses when faced with a new film by Michael Mann. The Chicago-born director has, it is true, received praise from critics of many genders for pictures such as Heat, The Insider and Collateral. Nonetheless, his droning ambient soundtracks and seductive monochrome cityscapes do seem to have a particularly potent effect on men. Cast your eyes around the auditorium during the screening of a Mann film and you will see male faces frozen in the sort of quasi-deranged rictus that Sting probably adopts when enjoying one of his notorious two-hour orgasms.
I am a man. Therefore I love Mann. I am in LA to see Mann's big-screen adaptation of Miami Vice. I am, then, to meet Mann in person.
I've gone a bit funny.
Such generalisations about gender are, of course, extremely dangerous. A female film writer who is close to me has, over the last few months, been driven to fits of newsprint-chewing fury by the spate of columns in which women suggested ways other women could get through the horrible business that was the World Cup. This ardent Liverpool supporter does, nonetheless, greatly enjoy parodying the monkish devotion that male film critics - and, more precisely, one who writes for The Irish Times - show for St Michael of Illinois.
Imagining the posture I might strike when I am led in to meet the director, my hilarious companion clasps her hands together, places them to one side of her face and gazes upwards at a supposed descending deity. Mutterings from me about the babbling hysteria that might greet an appearance by Steven Gerrard do nothing to restrain her satirical instincts.
To get to grips with the odd phenomenon of Mann-worship, we should, perhaps, glance at the most sacred of his texts. Mann's 1992 adaptation of The Last of the Mohicans, in which Daniel Day-Lewis ran past trees to good effect, was a very fine piece of work. Collateral from 2004, a taut thriller following a taxi-driver's uncomfortable experiences transporting a contract killer, made impressively sinister use of Tom Cruise. But, barring the delivery of a truly spectacular masterpiece, Mann's long-term reputation will probably rest on his 1995 thriller Heat.
There is so much stuff here for boys to adore. Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, two actors whose tortured, faintly guilty machismo appeals to guys who pretend to understand feminism, portray, respectively, a cop and a thief engaged in a mighty tussle around the meaner streets of Los Angeles. As always, Mann, whose father was a Ukranian-born greengrocer, portrays work as both a burden and a source of spiritual fulfilment. Women may be beautiful and wise, but, as in the work of Hemingway, Mailer and other storytellers unpopular in Women's Studies departments, they never quite understand the dreadful strain we endure carrying round our complicated psyches (and egos).
A crucial scene in Heat involves arguably the most spectacular - and certainly the noisiest - gunfight committed to celluloid. After robbing a bank in downtown LA, De Niro and his mob, suddenly surprised by the cops, discharge enough ammunition to win a handful of world wars. More men than women do, it is true, enjoy watching guns being fired. But the key to understanding the underlying attraction of man's love for Mann can be found in that lengthy part of the credits which deals with the sequence's planning. There, next to the chilling words "technical weapons training", we find the name of Andy McNab.
The point is not that McNab, the pseudonym of a former SAS man turned bestselling author, is such a macho figure. What's important here is McNab's standing as an expert. Men adore experts. The accumulation of information can gain an individual a status in the male world far greater than that accrued by those in possession of genuine insight or perspicacity. And, by golly, do we find experts in Heat. Every character in the film is dripping with know-how. The script groans beneath the weight of its insights on guns, explosives, cars, forensics and - more than anything else - the topography of Los Angeles.
On Collateral, experts helped Mann chose a digital video camera to give him spectacular results when shooting at night. When, in Miami Vice, a smuggler's plane flies beneath a scheduled flight to evade radar, we know instinctively some expert has informed the director that this is a technique used by genuine villains. Many boys who once read Popular Mechanics have grown into Michael Mann fans.
Colin Farrell, who stars in Miami Vice alongside Jamie Foxx, agrees that the director is fastidious."He is a very aggressive film-maker," he tells me. "He is like a pit-bull with a piece of leather in his mouth. Once he gets a particular shot in his head he will do anything to get it. The same with a particular design feature."
Watching Miami Vice, I am conscious of an enormous collective effort of will taking place among the men in the audience. We are all trying desperately hard to love the thing. Sadly, the film, based on the slick 1980s series, of which Mann was executive producer, is fighting back at us. Miami Vice is certainly not short of expertise, but its grimly humourless tone is proving somewhat hard to digest. What will I say to Mann?
The first thing I notice about the director, now 63 years old, when he strolls into the Four Seasons Hotel the following day for a round-table interview with journalists is that he appears to be wearing hearing aids. Not any old hearing aids, of course. Nearly invisible, they hug his ears neatly and match the colour of his hair perfectly. I bet those are the hearing aids the CIA use.
An Australian man asks him to explain - not in so many words, you understand - why he is so wonderful. A German man interrupts Mann's answer and is, politely, but very firmly, told to wait until he reaches the next full stop.
Desperately trying to restrain my hands from forming themselves into the supplicant's position, I shape sentences in my head that will communicate my appreciation of his talents without seeming too glutinous. I realise that they are talking about the extraordinarily misguided moment in Miami Vice when a cover version of Phil Collins's horrible In the Air Tonight is played over the soundtrack in its dreary entirety. Mann is asking what we thought. He's looking at me.
Words emerge from my stupid mouth. The wrong words.
"Well I can't stand the song. So, I hated it," I mutter.
Mann squints at me. Do I imagine a flicker of disgust? He looks away and never looks back. Great. That's one of my heroes well and truly offended. If I ever get to meet Gore Vidal, maybe I'll just poke him in the eye with a well-sharpened pencil.
Miami Vice opens next Friday
Male bonding: films that make men feel like men
Heat (1995)
A veritable compendium of the elements that men savour in movies. Pacino. De Niro. Logistics. Volume. Facts. There are women in the picture, of course, but it still ends with the two blokes holding hands.
The Great Escape (1963)
Each Christmas, Steve McQueen (right), a sex symbol famously adored more by men than women, fails to jump that fence on his motorbike. Frustrated by the equally insurmountable challenges posed by a post-feminist society, we sympathise.
Fight Club (1999)
So, mollycoddled and neutered by today's cosy conveniences, we all, it seems, yearn secretly to punch one another in the head and blow up buildings. Really?
Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
Pacino again. James Foley's version of David Mamet's profane drama concerning desperate real estate salesmen has gradually gained cult status among men who hate their jobs.
Alfie (1966)
Virtually any of Michael Caine's films from the 1960s will do (left in Get Carter) . But Lewis Gilbert's dark comedy, in which the star shags his way around London, says most about the awful traumas that result from being young, male and oversexed.