Heat: One-Half of a Truly Great Film

When the credits rolled on Michael Mann's 1995 cops-and-robbers thriller Heat, a question popped into my head. "Why don't they make movies like this anymore?" Not because the movie contained some inherent hint of perfection or superiority to anything released post-2000, as some might have you believe, but because this movie was very different from what I've come to expect when I hear the phrase "action movie," and accomplished so much with such a down-to-earth approach that it felt so alien, and yet strangely familiar all at the same time. Its scope has an ambition to it that we've come to associate with big-budget superhero movies, and yet its setting is contemporary Los Angeles. Epic yet realistic action films aren't the highest-hanging fruit on the tree, and if an ambitious director were to set his or her sights on recreating some of the uncommon phenomena that Mann and the team of Heat brought to bear, I'd say that it would be great if we could make another movie like this, not necessarily because all would be rainbows and Kumbaya if we could bring back all the habits of 90's cinema - far from it - but rather because it would give moviegoers an alternative to what we've come to expect and accept as mainstream. Yes, despite its imperfections, I liked Heat, and I really appreciated the surprisingly character-centric and mostly solid story it told. Mann clearly understands the action genre, and when the film does something well, it does it really in ways that have been vapidly imitated by lesser action films for some time now to lesser effect. And so even though this movie does have some frustratingly prevalent flaws, I count myself fortunate to have stumbled upon it, and likewise fortunate that I get to review it. Let's dive into this.

Heat chronicles a battle of wits between Vincent Hanna, a lieutenant in the Los Angeles Police Department, and Neil McCauley, a professional thief based out of the same city. The situation escalates as those near and dear to the two men catch flak from the increasingly dangerous and personal situation.

I want to start by commending the action sequences in this movie because they're sincerely some of the best I've ever seen in my run as a film lover, filmmaker, and film critic. One sequence that features Neil and his colleagues robbing a bank is the highlight of a film that contains several highlights and thoroughly understands that to make your action scenes land with the most impact possible, you need to be patient and willing to try to build some kind of suspense before you let the violent cat out of the bag. And though the bank robbery scene featured in Heat is definitely the most well-done and well-thought-out portion of the movie, the film maintains a very high standard for its action sequences throughout and uses smart tools like putting the characters involved on a countdown, constantly making sure situations evolve, and refraining from using too much gunfire to the point where it loses impact to ensure that when action sequences in the film appear, they hit with a force that is genuinely rare. In addition, the film's pacing sticks to an imperfect but intelligent balancing act of utilizing a frenetic scene-to-scene pace but allowing the overarching plot to take its merry time and develop the big picture of the movie's story slowly and methodically, so at times, Heat can feel action-packed, but also kind of mysterious. To put the cherry on top of these technical triumphs, Heat has some excellent cinematography courtesy of Dante Spinotti, and at points throughout the film, I saw visual cues, color palettes, and camera blocking styles that were not-so-subtly borrowed by cinematographer Wally Pfister for another, more well-known crime epic, Christopher Nolan's much-loved The Dark Knight. And I would say that Pfister was right to do so because Spinotti genuinely shot a mean image for Heat. To move on from the subject of cinematography while also paying appreciation to the idea of homage, in a not-so-subtle nod to Heat, Nolan actually had actor Wally Fichtner, who plays a bank manager in Heat, portray a shotgun-wielding mob bank manager in Batman's outing. Yeah, the guy who says,

"Do you have any idea who you're stealing from?! You and your friends are dead!!"

On a characterization level, Heat smartly delves into the personal lives of both Vincent and Neil and explores the ways in which their chosen professions bring an uncomfortable amount of tension into their personal lives. I noted that the film's strengths were very apparent to me right from the get-go, and the plotting strategies of the writers were quite smart. The plotting of Heat contains very few fundamental issues, and I found that when problems did arise, they had less to do with bad ideas, and more to do with lackluster execution of good ones. The pacing of this film sometimes became too enamored with plot details that don't matter enough at the expense of causing the story to move forward in any way, and at points throughout the runtime, I wasn't able to feel the heat anymore and wondered if the film might be better off being named something like Lukewarm. This is felt most in the second half of the film's first act, which was strangely monotonous and meandering. Fortunately, the film was able to fully rekindle the fire before the final act, ending the film on a very high note. And so even if the film wasn't able to get to a satisfying ending in a flawless manner, that ending sure was a good one, and impacted the lives of both Vincent and Neil in ways that made us understand why these two men care about the people and things that matter to them as much as they do. Also, by the time the film started to come around to this final piece of the plot, the other threads in the movie had all more or less wrapped up, and the movie smartly freed us to focus on the inevitable final showdown between the two men and didn't bother reiterating things we already knew.

Heat is ultimately a good movie, and I sincerely believe that despite its flaws, it's one-half of a great one as well, because when it does do something well, it just about sets the standard for doing it. Look no further than the film's excellent action sequences and its sparing use of them. The film also has a good grasp of plotting, and you can tell that the writing is good, but I also get the sense that the page-to-screen execution was likely where a lot of the film's problems arose from, as the pacing of Heat occasionally rushes at points and occasionally drags at others, and might have benefitted from cutting maybe twenty total minutes from different parts of the movie to avoid becoming bloated. But overall, Michael Mann's much-loved heist saga is a big win, and if nothing else, I think I've found my all-time favorite shootout in a movie. I also observed that it's a film that might benefit from additional viewings because, at points in the movie, I found myself mixing Neil and Vincent up, although that probably has more to do with me accidentally switching the names around in my notes than anything else. But that admitted, this film's plot can be pretty complicated at times, and I think my appreciation for Heat will probably go further if I sit back down and watch it again, and once again, I'm going to bring you back to the idea that sometimes, this movie tries to introduce some plot beats that just aren't necessary and that if it had cut that pesky twenty total minutes out, this film could have been even better than it already is. But once everything was over, and the fat lady had sung, Heat is a good action movie, despite being some cuts and refinements short of a truly great one. Switching gears, as far as parental advisories go, Heat is a pretty straightforward R-rated action film and contains some pretty strong realistic violence and R-adjacent language throughout, as well as a few scenes with sexual tension that never veer into the explicit. For parents out there, it's probably nothing that you shouldn't have to worry about if you're already letting your kids watch an R-rated movie, but I figured I'd include this in my article anyway just to save you the hassle of going to an impersonal site like the MPAA or conversely, a touchy and parent-run one that freaks out about any movie that goes beyond the content conventions of a low-end R. But anyways, I liked this movie, and I think you will too, so I'm going to let any of my misgivings about what you might think of the content of Heat....chill out.

Come on, that was a good one.

Heat - 8/10

1 Timothy 5:8