The Haze of L.A. Lights Never Looked Better

Rating: 10/10 (19 August 2006)

A lacquered film, yes, but brimming with thought and accepted axioms is Michael Mann's "Heat" (1995). You won't see any glam cops strutting their way down an imaginary runway (Michael Mann was a strong force for the TV series "Miami Vice") but you will see plausibly hardened characters who struggle and keep in cadence with their respective propensities.
L.A.P.D. Lieutenant Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) is a consummate professional in law enforcement and investigation. Seasoned thief Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) is a consummate professional in stealing in all its forms - he's an ironically considerate one, though ("Your money is insured by the federal government - you're not gonna lose a dime," he harangues a frightened bunch of customers as he's holding up a bank.). Most of the film is spent watching these two attempt to outmaneuver each other - as if this were a game of chess using real people instead of pieces made out of wood.
These two men are the same type, except one plays yin to the other's yang. There's a scene of dialogue between the two in a coffee shop of all places that almost jumps off the screen it's so crammed with kinetic energy - it's like what it would be like to witness a conversation between Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. In it they both reveal their inescapable connection to their respective jobs - they love their women but cannot properly fit them in to their time-consuming routines. It's as if they're both resigned to their fates - they know one of them is going to die due to the heat coming around the corner
Coppola's "The Godfather Part II" is the best of all crime films and it seems appropriate that this one ranks in as a close runner-up - these two films are the only ones to have both Pacino and De Niro simultaneously in the cast. Both films are exquisite pieces of art in the guise of entertainment flicks. The former being about the gradual and inevitable annihilation of a family due to the nature of preoccupation - the latter being about the nature of preoccupation that precluded everything else.