New Classic: Heat
Amongst the lesser genres, heist movies rate at the top of my book. Growing up, I wanted nothing more than to be a criminal. This is probably due in large part to movies. Heist movies are by design transportive, bringing you, the audience member, along for the score. Nowhere is the thrill of the score more intense than in Heat, Michael Mann’s 1995 crime classic.
Heat has the best ensemble cast of any American film in the 90’s, starting with heavy hitters De Niro and Pacino, and rounded out by Tom Sizemore, Val Kilmer, Ashley Judd, Hank Azaria, Jon Voight, Natalie Portman, Henry Rollins, Danny Trejo and Judge Amy. Between action sequences, Mann goes deep into his character’s backstories, but even with all these additional characters and sub-plots, the film never feels cluttered.
Twice in the film, the DeNiro refers to his crew’s code, whereby all the trappings of life (family, friends, possessions) must be dropped the moment Johnny Law comes knocking. He repeats it as a sort of mantra, preparing himself the day they all know is coming. Over the course of three hours, we lean enough about those on both sides of the climatic shootout that the violence and sacrifice has context, and is that much more affecting.
There are some conspiracy theorists out there proposing that DeNiro and Pacino never act together in the same shot. There could be truth to this theory, as all of their shared scenes could be done with body doubles and stand ins. This does not bother me. There a certain beauty to their Doppelganger relationship: they are existential soul mates, destined to collide in Mann’s cold and empty Los Angeles. Stylistically calculating, simmering with melodrama and violence, Heat is not only the best heist film since Melville, it’s a stone-cold American Classic.
As a side note, I remember when the film came out, it’s central downtown shoot out was criticized as being too long and unrealistic. A year later, a botched robbery in North Hollywood went down that was quite similar.
