In Michael Mann‘s 1981 cinematic directorial debut Thief, the main character and titular thief Frank (James Caan) ends an argument with his love interest Jessie (Tuesday Weld) with the line: “So let’s cut the mini-moves and this bullshit, and get on with this big romance!” Herein begins, the moment it is made explicitly clear to his current and future audience—the big romance will be a core framework utilised in Mann’s oeuvre. Presented plainly and blatantly, by Caan playing a Chicago thief, with obvious elements of Chicagoan Mann himself in the character, it is a moment that cements that love stories are stitched within the worlds of this filmmaker’s characters. Mann is commonly known for stories concerning themselves with men who are usually positioned either as crooks, or being one with the law, with the lines constantly blurring, similarly to the limbs of lovers as they dance. His interest in the completeness of these characters feeds an interest in love, romance and sensuality—the vulnerability of the toughest men must be on show.

In Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans—a film populist at the time but now potentially overlooked—a romance of two star-crossed lovers plays centrepiece during the French and Indian war. Daniel Day-Lewis, in his closest role to an action hero, plays Hawkeye, the white adopted son of the Mohicans, while Madeleine Stowe stuns as Cora, the daughter of a British Army Major. Cora and Hawkeye establish a deep attraction towards one another in these dire circumstances. Their chemistry effortlessly unfolds with simple but cutting dialogue, when Cora asks Hawkeye what he’s looking at he, without missing a beat, replies: “I’m looking at you, miss.” Through such language and exchange, an attraction is developed. He acknowledges her, he likes what he sees, there is a frank understanding of being ready to risk it all. It embodies a recurring notion that exists in plenty of Mann romances—the idea of ride-or-die companionship, romance that doesn’t crumble, a foundation that is strong. Their tenderness blooms throughout the film from that point on. Due to the success that these types of period romance films had in the 1990s, it’s unclear if this is a romantic drama snuck into a historical action film, or the other way around. Since Mann’s films are positioned by a masculine blockbuster idealism (even in moments of box office failure), The Last of the Mohicans holds a clear position as one of the most overtly romantic pieces Mann has ever crafted.

Day-Lewis and Stowe in The Last of the Mohicans (Image Courtesy of 20th Century Fox)

Few contemporary films make a more potent case for acting as an art form than Heat, wherein Mann stages the famous showdown and communion of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. A film Mann made with a script originally used for the TV movie L.A. Takedown, now injected by the two new leads with an undeniable vivaciousness. The much mythologized and beloved actors sit across from each other in Heat, playing Lieutenant Vincent Hanna (Pacino) and Neil McCauley (De Niro), a cop and a robber absolutely fated for one another. Both characters have female paramours—Hanna has a subplot of his crumbling marriage with ex-wife Justine (Diane Verona), and McCauley falls in love with Charlene (Ashley Judd).

These romances aren’t inessential, the underlying Bonnie and Clyde tones that Mann likes to play with come through specifically between De Niro and Judd. However, it is evident that the closest thing to a tender romance filled with flirtation, understanding, and respect is between the two male leads in the film. As they sit across each other, quipping back and forth, it’s an intimacy with danger that obviously evokes a sense of arousal because these characters have both signed up for a life of intimacy spent with danger. They’ve married risk, and every woman, no matter how in love either of the characters are with her, cannot compare. This shared understanding, this similarity in their hearts, feels like the true romance of Heat.

Mann directing Pacino and De Niro in Heat (Image Courtesy of Warner Bros)

Evidently fascinated by romantic blind loyalty, Mann uses characters going through subjective experiences and their emotionality to depict these types of relationships. Blackhat is about a convicted hacker named Nicholas Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth), who is offered clemency to hunt a cybercrime network. Similarly to many Mann characters before him, he’s a criminal that prides himself on his meticulous nature, an expert in his field of criminality. Hathaway forms a bond with his friend’s sister Chen Lien (Tang Wei), a networking engineer working alongside him on the case. Hathaway is charmed by how candid this woman is, she speaks clearly and expertly, a woman that knows what she wants and where she is. Their romantic involvement is one built on a foundation of her fearlessness; they develop a grammar of their own through shared loneliness within their own brilliance. Loyal love for the digital age, a cool sheen is glazed onto the hacker couple that under the lens of another director wouldn’t hold an imperturbable essence.

Within Mann’s biopics of great men Ali and Ferrari, it is fascinating to see his portrayal of romance be mutually limited and expanded by the realities of these individuals’ real lives. Muhammad Ali’s (Will Smith) first three marriages are depicted, the beginnings and endings of those relationships mirroring the highs and lows of his career. The first one being to cocktail waitress Sonji Roi (Jada Pinkett-Smith), a relationship that crumbled because she wasn’t interested in presenting modestly despite converting to Islam, due to how much she loved him. Regardless, the beginnings of that relationship are presented with an air of young, hot and passionate love. It is when he realised her lack of malleability wasn’t guaranteed with her love, that problems occurred.

His second wife, Belinda Boyd (Nona Gaye), is exactly the malleability that Ali seeks out, and Mann depicts their happiness and the way she cooperates within the framework of his life. Differing from the sexuality and lust shown through his relationship with his first wife, we see the then 17-year-old Boyd as this pure entity, a singular innocent joy—two hands brushing against each other at their wedding celebration. As the rest of Ali’s life crumbles due to his refusal to join the Vietnam war, Boyd is shown as a deeply loyal and dutiful wife. Veronica Porché (Michael Michele) is the last wife we see (but not the real Ali’s last marriage, in 1986 he married Yolanda “Lonnie” Williams, his wife until his death in 2016), Porché is painted at the end of the film as a new beginning of sorts, unlike with his last wife, sexuality and flirting come back to the forefront of his romantic priorities. 

Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) has an infidelity that Mann depicts with more heart than may filmmakers would. Ferrari is set around the preparation for and the 1957 Mille Miglia event. Mann uses the containment of a single event in the icon’s story to portray Enzo’s life, character, and legacy, instead of going for a sprawling and tired biopic format. This serves the moment in his love life that is being platformed through that choice of depicting the movie at this point in time. The events of the film are a year after the death of Dino Ferrari, the only son of Enzo and Laura (Penélope Cruz). We see them in utter mourning, and Laura’s disdain for Enzo growing constant.

Throughout the movie, Laura becomes aware of Lina Lardi (Shailene Woodley), and Cruz brilliantly depicts the particular heartbreak—not from the infidelity, but from the idea that Enzo has another son, an easy replacement for what they had lost. Something that—in her eyes—he gets back, but she doesn’t. We are led to believe, despite the occurrences, that Lardi isn’t a true mistress in the traditional sense, that the two families of Enzo’s coexist and have an equal validity. Showing the romantic relationships of real men in history works well alongside Mann’s understanding of complete characters; there are no aspects of their personhood that will go forgotten, and an essential part of that is the women they choose to be with, or the ones they shouldn’t be with. The dreamy and romantic nature of his completely fictional depictions are slightly lost, as our feet are stapled to the ground of realities the women live through by loving these men.

Public Enemies prioritises intimacy through the romance of John Delinger (Johnny Depp) and Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard), set in the Great Depression and based on a nonfiction book of the same name. Delinger is a bank robber of the people, beloved by the people of Chicago and despised by the FBI as they chase him endlessly throughout the movie. He meets Frechette, and the life that he has built around robbing banks turns to fog. His priority instantly becomes her, he is besotted in a way that takes some time to become charming to her—she is wary of him despite the implied chemistry. Cotillard and Depp, despite their best efforts, don’t sell this implied chemistry. Regardless, the two great ingredients of a Michael Mann love story exist within the picture: a woman’s endless devotion towards a misunderstood man. Where the performances may lack, the way in which the film is shot on digital amplifies the intention. A story set in a past is made recent, is made touchable, you can almost taste their devastation and desperation on your tongue, as the images are painted clear and beautiful.

The most cogent romance in Mann’s filmography remains to be Miami Vice. Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Ricardo Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) are two detectives that go undercover, the story is an adaptation of the television series Mann executive produced. Unlike the show, the suaveness of 80s pastel suits aren’t what interest him. Where many filmmakers would have left space for a deeper friendship between Crockett and Tubbs, the film is completely and utterly stolen by the romance between Crockett and Isabella (Gong Li), the financial adviser of a drug trafficker. The men of Mann remain only interested in their work, and romance is their form of escape—the true way in which they resolve the tension of the rest of their complex lives. However, these specific circumstances display the way in which a love that burns this bright, can further complicate the conditions of a great man’s life.

Li and Farrell in Miami Vice (Image Courtesy of Universal Pictures)

Similarly to the “I’m looking at you, miss” line from The Last of the Mohicans, when Isabella considers Crockett’s offer to go for a drink (answering a question with a question, by asking what he likes to drink), he hits her with the now infamous line: “I’m a fiend for mojitos,” there is an identical underlying new romantic language being built. Neither moment is about whether Hawkeye is staring or what Crockett likes to drink, it is both men looking at these women and offering out a statement of intent: we see what is rumbling in our hearts and our only options is to feed this feeling, until it explodes. From that moment onwards everything is fast. Their chemistry in the speedboat is electric, their dancing hurried, the film overcome with a ferocious rapidity and desperation. The mise-en-scène of the lapping ocean surrounding them, implying both a mutual entrapment in their situation, and a hopeful desperation towards escape.

This amplified and noisy intention of the romance that he constructs so closely and warmly in digital, and then repeats a few years later in Public Enemies, was mastered here. Atmosphere and chemistry come together to create Mann’s greatest romance in Miami Vice, the intensity of being undercover and falling in love weighs heavily in the air and sea, every moment the two characters grace the screen together.