The Esteemed Critic Reviews Heat

 

Heat, a 1995 Micheal Mann film, is the sort of big-budget, star-driven thriller that doesn't get made much anymore, due to Hollywood's increasing reliance on franchises and reboots rather than directors and actors. Starring Al Pacino, who plays LAPD lieutenant Vincent Hanna, and Robert Deniro as Neil McCauley, Heat is a heist flick pitting two Italian-American superstars against each other in an escalating battle of violence and wits. This cast is absolutely loaded--Val Kilmer gets second billing as McCauley's right hand man Chris Shiherlis, Jon Voight is McCauley's fence, Ashley Judd is Kilmer's romantic interest, and a teenage Natalie Portman plays Pacino's suicidal step-daughter--and all are well-utilized during the film's nearly three-hour run time. Pacino's Hanna is more or less a caricature of his 90's persona--loud, dripping machismo, and prone to wide-eyed monologues on great asses--but his over-acting works in this case, since Hanna is exactly the sort of character who would act like Al Pacino. Deniro is more subdued as career criminal McCauley, and although the two only share a brief conversation before the tense finale on an airport runway, Heat does live up to its billing. The plotting is razor-sharp as McCauley's crew bungles heist after heist, and you feel the tension as the stakes rise, especially after a downtown shootout that resembles something out of Grand Theft Auto (Heat was supposedly an influence on that series). It's up there with Scorsese's The Departed as one of my favorite crime thrillers. One interesting theme is that the film's primary characters keep forsaking the pleasures of domesticity for a job that is killing them. Hanna is on his third marriage, and after learning of his current wife's infidelity (Diane Venora), he takes his tv with him and later chucks it out onto the street. "Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner," says McCauley, and while his relationship with young graphic designer Eady (Amy Brenneman) seems to be an exception, in the end, he ends up feeling the heat. Highly recommended.