Heat (Michael Mann, 1995):
Big week for Michael Mann . . . his new picture The Insider comes out. I found it to be a compelling account of historically significant events, but my colleague Jordan Hoffman, who wrote the LS.n review, wasn't quite so impressed. Still, he agrees with me that Mann's earlier picture, Heat, is a fantastic piece of entertainment. In my estimation, one of a few really epic cops and robbers pictures out there.
Michael Mann's career has been mixed. His 1983 Nazi vampire film, The Keep, is on my list of worst movies ever, a particular bummer because I was a big fan of the book as a kid. But he's done other good work along the way, and Heat is my personal favorite. It's the tale of a cop (Al Pacino) and a robber (Robert De Niro). Both are very good at their respective jobs. Both are lousy at relationships. Pacino has a wife who feels alienated by his obsession with catching baddies. De Niro awkwardly forms a relationship with a nice girl only because she makes the first move . . . but his motto is never have anything in your life you can't walk out on in five minutes if you smell the heat coming around the corner. This is not conducive to a long-term relationship, but God bless him, De Niro tries his best.
Of De Niro's crew of thieves, the one dedicated family man is Val Kilmer. He dotes on his wife Ashley Judd and she returns the favor by banging Moe the Bartender-- er, Hank Azaria. See, Kilmer learns the hard way that the life of a thief isn't compatible with the life of Joe Barbecue. No, sir--if you want to be a real man in this line of work, you've got to be hard like steel, not soft and cuddly like Bauxite.
The picture's like 3 hours long, but it ain't terribly plotty. Basically, De Niro robs shit, and Pacino picks up his scent and tries to take him down. Meanwhile, you got tough mothers like Jon Voight, Tom Sizemore and Dennis Haysbert trying to do bad, and other tough S.O.B.'s like Mykelti Williamson and Wes Studi trying to stop them from doing bad. And everyone, whether they're doing bad or doing good, looks real cool doing it, and finds lots of time to exchange machine gun fire at crowded L.A. intersections. It's a dog's life.
Of course through the whole of the movie you're waiting for the big moment when De Niro and Pacino are going to meet. Face to face, head to head, testicles to testicles, slap 'em on the table, see whose is bigger . . . It's a terrific scene. Pacino is hot in this movie, doing his wacky, over the top, Scent of a Woman shtick, but for my money no one's cooler than De Niro. This has got to be one of his greatest roles . . . it would be an honor to get robbed by a thief that tough, that smart, that professional.
Heat is one cool fucking movie. For bad guys versus good guys, and tough guys all around, this is a picture that doesn't disappoint. Kudos to writer/director Michael Mann for a grade-A addition to the Guy Movie pantheon.
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