- Title: Heat
- IMDb: link
In honor of the passing of Val Kilmer, this Flashback Friday takes us back to 1995’s tour-de-force crime drama Heat. Unquestionably Michael Mann‘s best film, Heat splits its focus between a crew of armed robbers led by Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) and the cops out to stop them led by LAPD Lieutenant Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino). No film has played both sides so well, although if I have a complaint it’s that a more ambiguous ending that faded to black on the gunshot in the weeds on the edge of Los Angeles International Airport allowing the audience to determine the winner of the pair’s struggle would seem to be more fitting.
While introducing us to McCauley’s crew which include Kilmer, Danny Trejo, and Tom Sizemore and his new love interest (Amy Brenneman) blissfully unaware of what he does for a living, at the same time we peek into Hanna’s failing third marriage involving a wife (Diane Venora) and stepdaughter (Natalie Portman) both on verge.
The film has some great action scenes including the opening armed car robbery which introduces us to McCauley and his crew including the unstable stand-in Waingro (Kevin Gage), but it saves the best for the climax in the street fight following the bank robbery (which takes far longer than the actual heist) leaving the L.A. streets covered in wrecked cop cars, shattered glass, and blood. Waingro and William Fichtner, playing the crooked businessman who the crew robbed in the first heist, will be threads of the story for McCauley to obsess over, often against his own best interests, and finally prove his undoing.
Both sides build throughout the film with the two at various times getting the upper hand before we finally get De Niro and Pacino face-to-face in a diner for, remarkably, the first time in their careers. The film is built on the notion that cops and criminals often have more in common with each other than their own loved ones. Lives are messy and complicated, but both McCauley and Hanna put their jobs first (often to the detriment of their personal lives). While they respect each other, and may even like each other to a certain extent after their meeting, neither will allow sentiment to get in the way.
It’s interesting in a movie where both the main characters choose business over love, the film’s most combustible relationship involving Kilmer and Ashley Judd is the one that somehow chooses love and ends on an upbeat, if bittersweet note. Judd’s subplot, Waingro, and Portman’s call for help are but three examples of Mann weaving extra layers to the script that make it far more than your average action drama. The script, acting, and directing are all standouts here creating a film that the likes of Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight, Edgar Wright‘s Baby Driver, Ben Affleck‘s The Town, any number of Jason Statham movies, and countless others have been emulating for decades. It’s not Kilmer’s best film, but Heat is a must-see for fans of the genre that still works 30 years after its release.
Watch the trailer
