So wonders Daniel Engber for Slate Magazine, who went on an epic quest to watch all the movies and TV shows Mr. Mann personally had a hand in making. He came up with some fascinating insights into his work:
I recall a while back someone (maybe even Mr. Engber himself!) watched all of Steven Spielberg’s movies and, like Mr. Engber does with Mr. Mann, comes to a realization that certain themes/story ideas tend to repeat themselves. In the case of Mr. Mann, Mr. Engber notes that it appears Mr. Mann returns to the same general story, complete sometimes with identical dialogue, as if trying to improve on the work.
This does not surprise me.
There are plenty of authors, artists, musicians, and, yes, filmmakers who to some degree or another repeat previous works. Some do so in plain sight (director Alfred Hitchcock twice made the film The Man Who Knew Too Much, first in 1935 and again in 1956). Author Clive Clusser, I’ve noted before, tended -at least until I stopped reading his works- to repeat the same general story that started in the past with the sinking of some famous vessel, then fast forward to the “near future” where his books took place and the hero has to recover the sunken vessel and its usually deadly cargo before the bad guys do.
James Bond films have/had also settled into a standard plot: You started with a slam bang action montage which sometimes, though not always, would have something to do with the film itself. You had Bond and his usual characters introduced, then Bond would go off to face the situation he was tasked to take care of. In the process, he would seduce a woman, often a relative innocent but a woman who somehow was involved in the nefarious goings on and she would often become the victim of the bad guys. Bond would take that woman’s death as incentive to keep after the bad guys, in the process falling for/seducing a second woman (who may working for the bad guys or be a wishy washy mercenary) and with her by his side take on the bad guys and ultimately triumph.
But, as I noted before, sometimes the stories get really similar. The 1967 Bond film You Only Live Twice was essentially remade as The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) which, in turn was essentially remade as Moonraker (1979).
Getting back to Mr. Mann, I find several of his films incredibly good. Heat, Manhunter, Collateral (though the story gets rather preposterous after a while), and, yes, even the very crazy The Keep. I also respect what he brought to television. While Miami Vice might not have aged that well, the show was a watershed moment in TV creation. I also greatly enjoyed Crime Story.
But I will be the first to say the I could NOT sit though all of Mr. Mann’s works. Hell, it’s hard enough for me to keep the DVR’s free memory above 40% as it is.
Still, a fascinating article for those interested in reading about Mr. Mann’s film output.