James Mangold made his first film at 17 as a student at CalArts. It was a promotional short for General Motors that won him a $1,000 prize and got him a studio deal at Disney, which had him co-writing the script for an animated cat comedy called Oliver & Company. A few years later, he pivoted entirely, enrolling in Columbia Film School and studying under legendary directors Miloš Forman and Alexander Mackendrick, which ultimately led to him making his first independent film, Heavy, at the age of 32.
To go from producing promotional films for big corporations to cobbling together funds for gritty indies might seem like a wild journey in the span of a decade, but in many ways, that’s the story of Mangold’s varied career: a man who has balanced art and commerce, commercial risk and professional sheen. He’s a respected craftsman who nevertheless puts his own stamp on all of his movies, no matter how different they may seem. His movies feel like his while still reaching a larger audience: His last eight films have all made at least $50 million at the domestic box office, and his last five made more than $100 million. His newest, the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, looks positioned to keep that streak going.
With A Complete Unknown hitting theaters today, we looked back at Mangold’s career, an impressive mix of audience-pleasers and legitimate risks. Some of these movies work better than others, but all of them are made by a director firmly in control of his projects. He’s a man who always knows what he’s doing, and how to deliver the goods.
Kate & Leopold (2001)
Especially early in his directing career, Mangold seemed game to tackle a new genre each time out. For Kate & Leopold, which he co-wrote, the filmmaker took on the high-concept romantic comedy, telling the story of a 19th-century duke (Hugh Jackman) who ends up in the modern age, falling for a predictably type-A business executive (Meg Ryan). Neither a hit nor a critical fave, this fish-out-of-water love story slavishly follows the genre clichés without ever sending them up or offering a fresh spin on them. And despite casting two immensely likable actors, there’s never the effervescent spark you’d expect from Jackman and Ryan. Honestly, maybe rom-coms just aren’t Mangold’s métier: Noticeably, he’s not done one since.
Identity (2003)
Mangold wanted to make an Agatha Christie–type murder mystery — he was a couple of decades ahead of Knives Out — but it got away from him with this ten-characters-in-a-motel potboiler starring John Cusack, Ray Liotta, Rebecca De Mornay, and countless others. The movie feels like a cliché, almost deliberately so, for its first two-thirds before unveiling a completely wild twist that is just audacious enough to almost make you forget the ordinariness of the rest of the film. Identity ends up being too clever by half, but it spoke to how Mangold, early in his career, was always eager to make a film a little bit more different, and a little bit more difficult, than you might have been expecting.
Heavy (1995)
Mangold’s feature directorial debut was this indie drama, which he also wrote, about a sad, overweight man (Pruitt Taylor Vince) who becomes smitten with a waitress (Liv Tyler). The young filmmaker hoped to create something different than the movies that were out at the time. “From a purely artistic point of view, it’s an exploration of an alternative rhythm,” Mangold said. “To me, there’s the high-octane, technically proficient style of what most people think of American late-20th-century cinema, the kind of hyper-energized Spielbergian, Scorsesian work. Then there’s this actor’s cinema, which is a lazy camera covering great performances.” Drawing inspiration from Ozu, Mangold crafted Heavy as a formally rigorous, gently reflective piece of work. Unfortunately, the movie is more mannered than moving, suggesting an ambitious director who hadn’t quite yet landed on a compelling style.
The Wolverine (2013)
After the critical and commercial disappointment of 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Hugh Jackman’s beloved mutant was in need of a serious rethink in order to prove he could be a viable standalone superhero. Initially, Darren Aronofsky was going to direct a new Wolverine film, but after that version fell apart, Mangold (who had made Kate & Leopold with the star) came aboard. The results were better than X-Men Origins but still disappointing, sending Logan to Japan, where he battles the Yakuza and the Silver Samurai. Although The Wolverine was less cartoonish than its predecessor, Mangold and Jackman couldn’t figure out what made this charismatic character such a riveting presence. They’d have better luck with the next installment in the franchise.
Knight and Day (2010)
Knight and Day was a project that had bounced around from director to director and star to star. (At one point it was going to be Chris Tucker and Eva Mendes.) Mangold signed on just in time for Tom Cruise to come aboard, turning what probably should have been a mild action comedy into something bigger than it was ever meant to be. Cruise does have some fun as a sort of madcap version of Ethan Hunt — he’s a secret agent who keeps kidnapping Cameron Diaz to save her from the global plot she accidentally finds herself in the middle of — but the movie is bulkier than it needs to be; it’s too difficult for Mangold to keep it light on its feet. He still does his best to keep the trains running on time, as would become his specialty, and the movie ends up somehow being a little more straightforward and a little less manic than you might expect. It’s one of the least memorable movies of just about everyone involved, and in their own ways, they’d all improve on its template as the years would go on.
Cop Land (1997)
A personal story based on Mangold’s hometown 60 miles from New York City, Cop Land was a script (like Heavy) put together in film school. More than any of his movies (including Heavy), it feels like a student’s script: smart in parts, ambitious everywhere, but also heavily derivative of films that came before it. You can see echoes of other, better performances from Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, and Ray Liotta here, but nothing that stands out as particularly inspired. Cop Land is perhaps more pulpy than is good for it; Mangold wants to make an art film and an action movie, and he’s not quite experienced enough to nail the balance. He does get one of Sylvester Stallone’s better performances — Stallone gained weight for the role of sad-sack sheriff Freddy Heflin, who finds himself unwillingly thrown into an NYPD corruption investigation, which might be the least vain of his entire career — but Mangold would probably make this movie better today than he did 27 years ago.
Girl, Interrupted (1999)
Angelina Jolie won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of the psychiatric patient Lisa Rowe in this adaptation of the Susanna Kaysen memoir. Mangold wisely cast Winona Ryder, who often played alienated and apathetic young women, as Kaysen, who is forced by her parents to live in a mental institution after an accidental overdose. Girl, Interrupted looked harshly at how women are (almost literally) driven mad in our sexist society, and while the performances are often quite affecting, the film’s penchant for emotionally manipulative plot twists can occasionally undo what’s stirring here. “I really hate that movie,” Kaysen said of the adaptation, dismissing it as “melodramatic drivel.” That’s too harsh, but her criticism isn’t entirely off.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
It’s no fun to be the guy to take over for Spielberg: Just ask Joe Johnston (Jurassic Park 3) or Jeannot Szwarc (Jaws 2), wherever they are. Mangold acquitted himself perfectly fine in the final Indiana Jones chapter, though audiences may have decided that “perfectly fine” wasn’t enough if they were going to say good-bye to Indy. As usual, Mangold hits all the marks and delivers a professional, moderately entertaining movie, but he doesn’t really have the sense of Spielbergian wonder that can pull off that stunning third-act turn. He’s better in the quieter moments, which is why the final scene works so well; he’s invested in finishing this story the right way. One suspects history will remember Dial of Destiny more fondly than audiences in 2023 were willing to admit.
Logan (2017)
Try something different. That, Mangold told Vulture in 2017, was the driving impetus behind Logan. The director was given the freedom by 20th Century Fox, because it was the final good-bye to Hugh Jackman playing Wolverine, to make the movie however he wanted to. What he decided to do was make a violent, semi-western, semi-futuristic epic that allowed Jackman to portray the character in the R-rated way that Wolverine had been envisioned in the comics. Logan felt more striking in 2017 than it does now — it’s not so strange to see an R-rated comic-book movie anymore — and it does hurt a little that Jackman did, in fact, come back to play the character once more. (In another R-rated comic-book movie, no less.) But Mangold’s seriousness of purpose does elevate the film regardless: He takes this deadly serious, and thus so do we.
Walk the Line (2005)
After a couple misfires — Kate & Leopold and Identity — Mangold rebounded with this biopic that doubled as a touching love story. Walk the Line traces the romance between Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) and June Carter (Reese Witherspoon), two talented country musicians who became one of the genre’s most iconic couples — despite Cash’s demons, which constantly threatened to tear their marriage apart. Both actors got Oscar nominations, with Witherspoon winning Best Actress, and they’re gripping both onstage and off. True, some of the familiar rock-movie tenets are on full display — Walk Hard steals much of this film’s narrative through-line for its vicious genre parody — but Mangold’s clear affection for these artists and their milieu shines through.
A Complete Unknown (2024)
Did anyone need another Bob Dylan movie? Perhaps not, but give Mangold credit for finding the right way to tell the story of a critical period in the troubadour’s life — that exciting moment when he arrives in New York as a kid, conquers the folk-music scene, and then goes electric. A Complete Unknown could be seen as the other side of the coin from Walk the Line: Both are romantic dramas about musicians, but only one of them has a happy ending. And that’s because this film, anchored by a masterful Timothée Chalamet performance, is wise about the capricious artist at its center: a restless rebel who simply could not abide by anyone’s else view of him, whether it was a lover or a patron like Edward Norton’s sad-eyed Pete Seeger. Elle Fanning and Monica Barbaro are both excellent as complicated women who get sucked into Dylan’s vortex and live to tell the tale, and the musical performances remind you why songs like “Masters of War” felt like lightning bolts. We didn’t need another Dylan movie, but we’re very glad one this sterling exists.
Ford v Ferrari (2019)
Never has Mangold’s focused professionalism — the sense that this guy makes movies like they used to — been utilized to better effect than in this relentlessly entertaining throwback. As Mangold has gotten older, he has gotten downright terrific at this sort of Movie Your Dad Will Love mainstream story. He’s firing on all cylinders here, delivering the action goods (the racing sequences are maybe Mangold’s best action scenes) while foregrounding the human drama and, especially, the bond between Matt Damon’s Shelby and his driver, a fantastic Christian Bale as Ken Miles. The movie is packed with excellent supporting performances — we love Tracy Letts as Henry Ford II the most — and is the perfect example of a film made by grownups, for grownups.
3:10 to Yuma (2007)
It’s a testament to Mangold’s reputation as an unshowy craftsman that his finest film is a remake — one without an ounce of fat or self-indulgent tinkering. Based on an 1950s Elmore Leonard short story, 3:10 to Yuma was first turned into a movie starring Glenn Ford as the villainous Ben Wade and Van Heflin as Dan Evans, a noble, down-on-his-luck rancher hired to ensure that the apprehended outlaw makes it on time to a train that will transport him to his trial. Mangold’s version was just as spare and engrossing, casting Christian Bale as Dan and Russell Crowe as Ben. With all due respect to Logan, this is Mangold’s Western, featuring excellent performances and a streamlined narrative highlighted by spartan but dynamic action set pieces. Sporting a superb supporting cast that includes Peter Fonda, Gretchen Mol, Ben Foster, Vinessa Shaw, and Logan Lerman, 3:10 to Yuma emphasizes what it is about the genre we love so much: its weathered depictions of good and evil, its vast landscapes, its matter-of-fact portrayal of a cruel world in which only the strong survive. Let other directors worry about “personal expression” and “authorial voice”: At his best, Mangold simply delivers the goods at a level others could only dream of. In this pitiless, rousing picture, he achieved true greatness.
Grierson & Leitch write regularly about the movies and host a weekly podcast on film.
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