Over the past ten years, legendary director Michael Mann has dramatically reduced his filmmaking output. He's only made two films since 2010: Blackhat in 2015 and Ferrari in 2023. Now that he's nearly 81 years old, letting up on the gas is only natural, especially considering how visually distinctive and rigorously researched every Michael Mann film has been.

While some critics would assert that Michael Mann's filmography is hit-and-miss, one thing is abundantly clear. Each one of Mann's movies is irrepressible, with brooding characters who only slow down to occasionally stare into the depths of a cool blue ocean before ramping back up to engage in an energetic action sequence designed to get an audience's blood pumping.

10 Ali Was Almost a Knockout

One of the few times Michael Mann may have bitten off more than he could chew was in Ali, the ambitious boxing biopic that chronicled the life of the most famous boxer of all time, Muhammad Ali. Remembered best as one of Will Smith's finest big-screen performances, he and Michael Mann reportedly spent countless hours studying Ali's fighting style and interviews. As such, Ali feels incredibly accurate.

The first hour of Ali is the most engaging, embracing all the heroics, controversy, and flaws that make up a man as mythological as Muhammad Ali. Michael Mann masterfully balances the sanctioned in-ring violence with the chaos that unfolded in Ali's personal life after he took a stance on the Vietnam War. Ali was a graceful film that floated like a butterfly. Unfortunately, it wasn't powerful enough to sting like a bee.

9 Public Enemies Sees Michael Mann Retread Old Themes

When released in 2009, Public Enemies featured two of Hollywood's most in-demand leading men, Johnny Depp and Christian Bale. This duo plays bank robber John Dillinger and FBI agent Melvin Purvis, respectively, showcasing the story of the man tasked with bringing America's most prominent public enemy to justice. While this sounds like a surefire formula for success, the problem was that these two dynamic actors barely shared any screen time.

What sets Public Enemies apart from other films in Michael Mann's oeuvre is how it blends his two favorite genres: the gangster movie and the biopic. However, combining history with the digital clarity of gangster shootouts should have resulted in more fun. With its focus on good versus bad distilled into the essence of two distinct characters, Public Enemies was a story that Michal Mann had told many times before.

8 The Keep Was Clearly Outside Of Michael Mann's Comfort Zone

The Keep was the only horror film Michael Mann has ever directed; unfortunately, it was also wildly compromised. While the film's production design and special effects are incredibly realized, the rest of the movie falls apart under scrutiny. The plot, which follows a group of Nazis awakening an ancient spirit, is mysterious, the dialog is next to impossible to decipher, and the vibes, atmospheric as they are, can only do so much of the heavy lifting.

That said, The Keep strikes an impressively distinct mood that sticks with an audience long after it's over. Aided by a classic Tangerine Dream score, the film is an exciting failure, even in its 96-minute form (cut down from Mann's original 210- and 120-minute versions). Today, The Keep is slowly growing a robust cult audience — so much so that a remake is apparently in the works. However, fans shouldn't expect Mann to be thrilled about that development since he disowned the film in 2009.

7 Miami Vice Was Ahead of Its Time

Perhaps no other movie in Michael Mann's canon has experienced a more significant increase in its reputation since its release than his film adaptation of Miami Vice. This version of the popular '80s television series was more complex, filthier, and much more abstract than its predecessor, subsisting on a formula of atmosphere, mood, and breath-taking Miami landscapes.

An early foray into the digital world of grainy pixels, Miami Vice's mise-en-scene was ominous and foreboding, walking the thin line between cheesiness and high-concept. Any other filmmaker would have failed to pull it off successfully, but the more audiences can stand back and look at this film removed from its quintessential 2000s style, the more apparent it is that a haunting, thrilling, and sexy movie is lingering just underneath the surface.

6 The Last of the Mohicans Became Michael Mann's Calling Card

Michael Mann's most successful historical film was The Last of the Mohicans, which starred Daniel Day-Lewis as a white man raised by a Native American chieftain stuck in the middle of the French and Indian War. Typical of Mann, the romance between Day-Lewis' Nathaniel Hawkeye and Madeleine Stowe's Cora Munro is rather uninspired, while the action sequences are anything but.

Thanks in large part to its sensational, action-packed final stretch, The Last of the Mohicans' most significant accomplishment was how it broadened Michael Mann's cinematic perspective. Having previously spent most of his career in the world of television, The Last of the Mohicans was such a gigantic hit that Mann wouldn't return to the small screen for decades. In short, The Last of the Mohicans cemented Michael Mann's place as one of Hollywood's most famous filmmakers.

5 Manhunter Crystalizes Michael Mann's One-of-a-Kind Aesthetic

Michael Mann was the first director to bring Hannibal Lecter to life in Manhunter, an adaptation of Thomas Harris's Red Dragon. Although received at the time with mixed reviews, Manhunter has seen a resurgence in critical appreciation thanks to its hyper-aesthetic allure, which is now much easier to digest than it was in the mid-80s. By combining deadly-serious stakes with some brooding dream-like imagery, Mann crafted a meticulous police procedural that perfectly encapsulates the harrowing emotional experience of being an FBI profiler tasked with bringing down serial killers.

In Manhunter, Michael Mann, aided by his cinematographer, Dante Spinotti, struck the perfect balance between the gritty aesthetic of a police investigation and the abstract, cerebral horror of the crimes on display. Much like how the film's central killer, Francis Dollarhyde, kills only to be seen, this film grows all the more impressive with each subsequent viewing.

4 Thief Is The Quintessential Michael Mann Film

Very few directors knock their first picture as far out of the park as Michael Mann did with Thief. Featuring a true-to-reality atmosphere, Thief is a hard-boiled thriller about a lone wolf safe cracker whose resolve to find a more respectable way of life is underscored poetically by Mann's choices. Shot in a rain-soaked Chicago, lit by neon signs, and scored by Tangerine Dream, Thief practically distills every one of Michal Mann's cinematic interests to their absolute essence.

Serving as our first real glimpse into Michael Mann's cinematic brain, Thief presents its audience with a thriving criminal underworld populated by character actors like James Caan and real-life cops (like Dennis Farina in his acting debut), shot in the cool blue hues and striking nightscapes that would soon become Mann's calling card. After Thief, Mann would refine his palette further, but it never felt as natural as it did here.

3 The Insider Is Michael Mann at his Most Cerebral

Based on the true story of a tobacco industry whistleblower, The Insider is a film that focuses on more than journalism. The movie is less concerned about getting the story right and more about simply getting it out in the first place. Starring Al Pacino as a producer on 60 Minutes who must go to great lengths to nail the tobacco industry with the help of ex-executive turned whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand, played by Russell Crowe, the Insider is a masterclass in both ambition and determination.

In his first-ever nonfiction narrative film, Michael Mann's surreal flourishes elevate what would otherwise have been a rote and dreary by-the-numbers procedural. Epic in scale and typically rigorously detailed, The Insider turns a battle against capitalism into one for the soul of America in a two-and-a-half-hour film that continually raises the stakes while remaining grounded enough to always feel prescient. Now's the time to rediscover this classic.

2 Collateral Unleashes Michael Mann's Creative Vision

Collateral could have easily turned into a lesser Michael Mann picture. This pared-down thriller in which a meek cab driver must go one-on-one against a seemingly unshakable hitman could have come and gone without much fanfare had any other filmmaker directed it. Luckily, that wasn't the case. By casting Tom Cruise and tapping into his effortless psychotic intensity, then juxtaposing that with a panicked Jaime Fox, Mann constructed one of cinema's all-time great cat-and-mouse games.

Of course, Michael Mann's incredible stylistic flourishes set Collateral apart from other films in the genre. Highlighting a rarely-seen cross-section of Los Angeles that includes alleyways and subway trains, Mann breathtakingly shoots LA while working with a digital camera for the first time. The action scenes are among the absolute best of his career, and when compared to Mann's more intricately epic crime films, this story is more entertaining than any other.