Apocalyptic and highly accomplished

Rating: Null/10 (25 November 2003)

I have heard of this film for ages, and I had never had true interest in watching it -I had the prejudice of an artificially fixed gimmick of De Niro and Pacino together again- until a good friend got me the DVD. I find exaggerated to say that this is one of the best 10 films of all time, but it doesn't deserve the poor 249th place of this ranking.
First, this film has one of the best action scenes ever: the bank robbery is one of the most powerful sequences of the 90's coming into my mind, truly spectacular stuff without relying that much on `cheap' fireworks as an average Bruce Willis or Samuel L. Jackson action number (not to tell Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone films!!) despite the wild shooting. For me, the biggest assert of this scene is the way Michael Mann administrates tension: a robbery that could be a highlight by itself is used as an introduction, as a presentation of one of the rivals in a Western duel. The other fighter, the LAPD, comes to the screen in very effective parallel action. So far everybody has moved at his natural tempo, but only in a second, one shot, all the tension accumulated during this magnificent presentation becomes released, triggering a riot of bullets in all directions, with a very effective contrast: the scene is shot so that we get the feeling of going very fast, but indeed, the gangsters leave much slower than, as usual, `running down the street and hiding at the first corner'. This speaks of the high skills with which Michael Mann has shot this film: at every point of this story, you get the right speed, the right colours, the right camera angles, and also an excellent music score (both composed and selected), so that the action flows naturally, full of style, but without falling in pedantery or self-indulgence of author films. At this point, I see some parallelism with `The Deer Hunter': most of the typical explosion-nuts complain about the slow development of the film excepting the action sequences, precisely what makes this different from most of the beloved pyrotechnical blockbusters of today: the accurate description of two characters having so much in common in spite of their goals. This is not a standard fight in the sense of who blows off the bigger targets, but a confrontation of two extremely competent professionals from the word `go' right until the end, taking the roles to a higher dimension through an analysis of their private situations, and spiced by the stories of some of the supporting characters. You don't know how they are hearing a bully militar reading up their curriculums like in a Chuck Norris-90-minute-epo, but watching the way they handle at every situation during the 3 hours of the film. Anyway, a big screenplay wouldn't be anything without big actors, and here is where the film ranks at the very highest: featuring an intense Al Pacino (as obsessive in his excessive acting as Vincent Hanna in lurking for his prey), the finest performance of Robert De Niro for a veeeeeery long time (in my opinion, his best work since the early 80's alongside with Goodfellas; the not-as-usual-overacted presence of this actor is just as magnetic and fascinating as in his best days back in the 70s), and very credible, top-notch performances from an all-star cast including Val Kilmer, Jon Voight, Ashley Judd, etc... The only drawback I see is that you can figure out what is going to happen at every moment, what in my case didn't matter that much because of the striking intensity of what I was watching.
To sum up: highly recommendable, too boring and sensible for average violence freaks, but a must for true cinema lovers.