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I was very much looking forward to this movie. Being a big fan of Michael Mann’s work on Heat and The Insider, I knew I was in for a good time. I loved every aspect of the film. The cinematography, editing, acting, dialogue, action, music, you name it.

The look of the film is beautiful. Mann chose a grainy, brownish look to the movie, and I don’t think there’s a better choice to describe Los Angeles at night. The Los Angeles depicted here feels real. Living in LA, I know these images well, but somehow I never looked at it the same way as I did in the movie. It’s just buildings and streets, but somehow it was beautiful. Michael Mann shot entirely on location in LA, which I commend. The scummy back alleys, the run down gas station, the commercial areas, it was all real. Even three of the clubs that are in the film are real (I looked them up). And when they show the inside of the clubs, they feel like real clubs, not something overly done as in many other films. And the choices of clubs were truly a representation of the different types of people in LA. The camera work isn’t distracting when important dialogue is being presented, and the different ways the movie shows the sights of LA was nice.

Tom Cruise pulls out a nice performance being the bad guy. Jamie Foxx impresses with a good serious role. Two actors doing something out of their norm and doing it well. Like Spider-man 2, the action wasn’t the highlight of the movie, it was the characters. The characters are nicely developed through gradual, unforced dialogue. Performances are great all around.

Finally the music stood out to me as well. The music was nicely varied as well, from the Audioslave track Shadow on the Sun providing a good driving mood, to the club scene with Oakenfold, to a jazz club scene with Miles Davis playing. In filmmaking, music is a key ingredient, I just wonder if all these music choices were Michael Mann’s picks.

I highly recommend this film to everyone. You may not like it if you are brain dead and don’t care for a lot of dialogue, but maybe there’s still enough there for you.