Having an iconic Hollywood filmmaker for a dad isn't always a cool thing. The dad in question: Michael Mann, the guy who brought us such notable gangster tales as "Public Enemies," produced the gritty, testosterone-infused "Heat" and has more than a dozen blockbusters to his name. Granted, Michael Mann may not have the cache of Francis Ford Coppola, but he is — in the words of Woody Allen — "in a place that counts."
Sadly, the same cannot be said for Mann's daughter Ami Canaan Mann, whose talent-rating is nowhere near that of Coppola's daughter Sofia, and whose struggle to get where she wants to be is painfully apparent in her film "Texas Killing Fields."
Produced by Mann Sr. and at first glance a scaled-down version of the kind of muscular, masculine homicide tale he loves to spin, "Texas Killing Fields" is in fact a quiet train wreck of a project. It's hard to pinpoint what exactly went wrong: Ms. Mann assembled an effective cast consisting of charismatic teen it-girl Chloe Grace Moretz ("Let Me In," "Hugo"), plus charismatic adult it-girl Jessica Chastain ("The Tree of Life") and not-so-charismatic "Avatar" dude Sam Worthington.