Michael Mann Blogathon-Day 3

Michael Mann Remake of Searchers

by Jeff Pike

It's notably outlandish even to speculate on the prospect of Michael Mann attempting some species of reboot of John Ford's classic John Wayne western, The Searchers. For one thing, Mann has shown remarkably little interest in the western genre for a director so preoccupied otherwise with hypermasculine material (crime, cops, gangsters, boxing, things blowing up). About the closest he's ever come was 1992's Last of the Mohicans, which misses the target era by well over a century, not to mention the target geography by a good 1,500 miles.Nor does he seem the type to take such a flier at one of the most formidably established and canonized of all films. Maybe Jim McBride and Breathless. Maybe Alfonso Arau and The Magnificent Ambersons on the A&E channel. Maybe even Gus Van Sant and Psycho. But Michael Mann and The Searchers? Never.Think of this, then, in the nature of a thought experiment.