Mann’s vision is compelling and conflicted. His is a world of trendy clothes and music and buildings which, whether old and decrepit or shiny and new, never fail to be beautiful and are often located on beachfront property, the better to contrast his characters’ in-the-moment struggle to survive and acquire against nature’s indifference to their wants. His 30-year filmography, examined here and in the next four chapters of this series, is a hall of mirrors, reflecting the artist’s past and future back on themselves. Mann’s world shows men and women struggling to be captains of their own fate, even as institutions, businesses, and national governments—and their own devoted loved ones—define their striving as selfishness or push for a piece of their action. It’s a world of doppelgängers, doubles, and perverted reflections. It’s articulated through an arresting style that fuses B-movie schlock with an inner-directedness that channels Michelangelo Antonioni, Akira Kurosawa, and Yasujiro Ozu. It’s a cinema of Zen pulp. Mann is its master.

- Matt Zoller Seitz, Zen Pulp  pt.1: Vice Precedent