#6: Heat
Release Date: December 15th, 1995
Format: Streaming (Netflix)
Written by: Michael Mann
Directed by: Michael Mann
4 Stars
Michael Mann’s Heat is to Nirvana’s Nevermind as his Thief is to their Bleach album. I can’t argue which pairing is better, but there is a clear choice which pairing is a hundred times more impactful to the culture. Thief is a great genre flick; Heat is, for many, the definitive heist film.
Here are some thoughts:
For a Chicago guy, Michael Mann shoots LA in such a familiar and intimate way that you’d swear he grew up there. Downtown concrete and glass structures, soulless postmodern hillside mansions, sleek coastal condos, oil rigs, south LA scrap yards, warehouse clubs, and relentless southern California sun are all integrated into the milieu of the film. And his use of an ethereal, tonal score gives the movie a melancholy feel. Maybe not melancholy. I’m not sure how to describe it. LA can feel like a disconnected city, and the score makes it seem disconnected.
There’s not a movie from 1995 that looks better than this. The photography is incredible. It looks current (not that current movies look universally good). I suppose I mean that it looks timeless.
Also, it’s incredible how much LA in 1995 looks like LA in 2024. I’m not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing.
I was young when this movie came out, but I was already in love with movies and I was aware of Pacino and De Niro having never shared screen time in a movie. Their scene in together in Heat was a big deal at the time. Now, 30 years later, it’s interesting to watch their performances. I prefer De Niro’s. I think at this point in his career, De Niro was still an experimental and flexible performer. Not to run through his entire early ‘90s filmography, but leading up to Heat his movies include Goodfellas, Awakenings, Cape Fear, This Boy’s Life, A Bronx Tale, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Casino. He gives divergent performances in all these, and they are all challenging, leading roles. Pacino by this point had adopted a kind of schtick with his performances that is showy and fun to watch, but is more about the performance than the character. His early ‘90s performances include an Oscar-nominated one, Dick Tracy, and an Oscar-winning one, Scent of a Woman. They are both fun performances, but they are as big and as loud as film performances get. Pacino also has a quieter but equally showy performance in Glengarry Glen Ross in 1992, and I feel like his performance in Heat is cut from the same cloth. On the page Ricky Romo in Glengarry is a much different character than Vincent Hanna in Heat, but watching Pacino’s performance I couldn’t see much difference. Not that he’s bad in Heat. He’s undeniably entertaining. Just schticky.
This movie also has Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore as two of the most memorable heist crew members ever. Val Kilmer needs a blank stare and a ponytail and somehow he steals every scene, while Sizemore has this gruff, hangdog expression that doesn’t quite hide the fact that his character is much more than he seems.
Michael Mann isn’t in the conversation as The Great American Director, and he’s probably not, but I feel like he gets cheated in not being mentioned. His movies are thoughtful, he explores complex themes, and he’s experimental in his craft, something that not all aging directors can say. He went on to make subsequent great movies, but Heat might be his crown jewel.
