Michael Mann. Once a pioneer of dark, nihilistic action, he's since continued his mood and themes while pioneering new HD technologies. The trouble is, while Mann loves shooting on digital, he's not a fan of going to the lengths necessary to clean up the digital "noise" you get from shooting in very bright or very dark locations. For this reason he catches a lot of flack from tech gurus and head scratching from average filmgoers who don't understand why his films are shot on "video." But regardless of how you feel about his digital push, Mann has a long history of great films and TV behind him. Here are his best.

Miami Vice (The Series)
While the film is cold, ruthless, and a lot of fun, the original TV series broke the mold and made for one of NBC's powerhouse lineups, becoming one of the original reasons to own a VCR. You didn't want to miss a minute of this morally ambiguous cop show in which a pair of slick, hip narcs infiltrated the seedy underworld of drugs and prostitution in one of the craziest cities in the nation. While much of what was great is very dated now, this was the mold by which hundreds of films would be cast from.

Heat
While Heat has issues as a film, the action in it is incredible and it has built a steadily growing following over the years that not only likes it, but loves it. Initially snubbed and mostly ignored by critics and the Oscars, people have rediscovered this film and fallen in love with one of the greatest shootouts ever set to film.

Manhunter
Although Manhunter is the original adaptation of the Hannibal Lecter series, Michael Mann turned down the chance to make the sequel, a little thing called The Silence of the Lambs. That decision allowed Jonathan Demme to take over and redefine the series forever with a focus less upon the cops and more upon the monster. But Manhunter? Manhunter is all about the cop. You may have seen the remake, Red Dragon, which is a better fit with the Silence of the Lambs universe but doesn't quite measure up to the white knuckle, gritty crime film that Mann made from the same material in the '80s. A real cop classic.

Collateral
Best known for being the film that showed us that Tom Cruise could play a great villain and Jamie Foxx could actually be a convincing leading man (remember when we used to joke about his movies?), this hard-nosed crime film was Mann's first foray into digital filmmaking and changed him as an artist forever. No cops in this one, at least not as main characters, this is the great story about a hit man who hires a cabbie to be his driver for a night with plans on pegging him for the murders. Trouble is, this cabbie catches on and what follows is a tense game of cat and mouse between an everyman and a trained killer. Great stuff.

The Insider
Mann took a short break at the turn of the century to make more serious, Oscar-caliber films before turning back to his true passion for crime. One of them, Ali, received nominations but has long been regarded as a bit of a failure (I mean, who makes a film about the greatest fight in history only to end the movie before the fight?). But The Insider proved to be a powerhouse film showcasing the talents of the soon-to-be superstar Russell Crowe, pitting him against Al Pacino in the true story of a tobacco industry whistleblower. This taut thriller actually made me quit smoking for two and a half whole hours before I had to smoke again to calm my nerves.

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