There’s a sentimental heart to Michael Mann’s films, as much as his fans might not like to hear about it. Run a movie like Heat or Thief alongside the finest crime novels of the same bygone era Mann taps as fuel for his ongoing, elegiac meta-saga on heist men, bag men, and hit men. Run them against key works by Westlake, Chandler, Hammett, or Bezzerides—authors whose heroes and antiheroes are all hard, bad edges. In Mann’s world, sentimentality is front and center, the prize beyond the horizon for the Los Angeles cab driver, the storied Depression-era stickup man, or the Miami vice cop. It’s the reason for some of those mournful stares, those knowing half-smiles that punctuate your Miami Vice, your Public Enemies.

At the same time, these stories may also be that of the sentimental dream being crushed, its embers stubbed out by crippling disappointment.