This week, Michael Mann adds to his directorial filmography with Public Enemies, the John Dillinger biopic starring Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, and a handful of supporting players you’ll probably recognize. While the film is getting mixed reviews, I feel this is mostly a result of misplaced expectations and comparisons to Mann’s other films. In fact, another writer has quoted a former studio chairman who hadn’t seen the film but already decided “it’s going to take itself too seriously, it’s going to be way too long and it will not focus on entertaining the audience.” He went on to say “Michael Mann, in the past 15 years, has not made one movie I’ve liked.”

Obviously Mann’s films aren’t for everyone. And while most of his work, including Enemies falls into the crime genre, they are not the typical 95-minute action movies that “focus on entertaining the audience,” per se. This is why I like them. Detractors call Mann’s work slow; I call it deliberate. After all, instead of a non-stop sequence of people running around doing things, isn’t it sometimes interesting to know who the characters are and, more importantly, why they make certain choices?

Michael Mann explores certain recurring themes in his work, and I find the most interesting of these to be the notions of individual and collective “professionalism” that often define both the protagonists and antagonists in his films. He avoids fixating on the more virtuous notion of honor (except, perhaps, in The Last of the Mochicans) and the black-and-white separation of “good guys” and “bad guys” such morality creates. Instead he prefers to operate in shades of gray and blur the line between good and bad. If a thief is extremely effective at his trade and behaves professionally, is he to be any less respected than the cop whose life’s work is chasing him?

This brings me back to Public Enemies, which I consider a good film if not a very good film. The preceding question certainly applies to Mann’s characterization of John Dillinger and Melvin Purvis, but the same question is asked even more directly by Robert DeNiro’s Neil McCauley and Al Pacino’s Vincent Hanna in Heat. And this [comparison] is perhaps what prevents Public Enemies from being more than a good film or a very good film - this nagging feeling that Mann has done a similar thing before in a slightly more developed, mature rendering.

In fact the similarities between Enemies and Heat are numerous: both feature a main protagonist and antagonist played by actors at the peak of their popular and artistic success. Both films also feature quite a shocking supporting cast. In addition to DeNiro and Pacino, Heat features Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, Ashley Judd, Jon Voight, Natalie Portman, Wes Studi, William Fichtner, Dennis Haysbert, Danny Trejo, Diane Venora, and even Jeremy Piven and Hank Azaria. Likewise, Enemies boasts an impressive, if underutilized supporting cast including Marion Cotillard, Billy Crudup, Giovanni Ribisi, Stephen Dorff, Channing Tatum, Emilie de Ravin, John Ortiz, Leelee Soieski, and Stephen Graham as the out-of-control “Baby Face” Nelson. Both films feature a single conversational confrontation between the two main characters, both films open with a premeditated action sequence, and both films are deliberate and violent. Technically, both films are beautifully shot, though a few scenes in Enemies suffer from Mann’s switch to HD cameras. And the thoroughness of the wardrobes, set designs, and Mann’s approach believably sets Public Enemies in early 1930s Chicago.

In short, I do recommend you go see Public Enemies in theaters soon. And then I recommend you watch Heat again or for the first time. Neither film is short, but brevity is not their intention. I also strongly recommend most of Michael Mann’s other films. Collateral, in which Tom Cruise puts in a shockingly good and convincing turn as a hitman, also stars Jamie Foxx and Jada Pinkett Smith and is perhaps my favorite of Mann’s films. The Insider received the most critical acclaim of Mann’s films, including Russell Crowe’s first Oscar nomination. But it is also arguably the “slowest” of Mann’s films. The Last of the Mohicans is a Mann film that appeals to a wide range of people, although it may at this point feel a bit dated by other epics like Braveheart.

No matter what your taste in movies, from war epic to crime to drama, if you approach Michael Mann’s films with an open mind and a few hours to invest, I believe you’ll find something you like. I know I have.