Less Noted Aspects of "Heat"

Rating: 9/10 (10 July 2005)

It must have been about 1996 or so when I remarked to a young clerk working at a video store what a great movie I thought "Heat" was. He enthusiastically concurred. I realized at that moment where Generation X got their obsession with the goatee -- from Robert De Niro's character, Neil McCaulay. Almost everyone in this flick hands in a good performance, with one notable exception. Al Pacino's unsympathetic wife, Justine (played by actress Diane Venora), really spoils the movie for me and she unfortunately has the most prominent female role. I couldn't stand the same actress as Clint Eastwood's wife in that movie where he's a boozing, irresponsible newspaper reporter trying to save a wrongly convicted death row inmate from execution. In both flicks, she is a whiny, self-absorbed, thoroughly annoying broad. In reading the first few of the several hundred comments about "Heat," I have yet to see anyone remark about the character, Waingro. Geez, what a scumbag. The actor who portrays this evil serial killer/sociopath (Kevin Gage) does so very convincingly. Right from the start, you see what a bastard he is as he almost casually executes the bank truck guard for no apparent reason, an act of senseless brutality which causes the deaths of other two guards, as well. Afterward, in the coffee shop, he downs a piece of apple pie, completely unaffected by what he just did. Those hard, squinting blue eyes just exude pure evil. This is most evident when he intimidates the young black prostitute he has just had sex with and is about to murder, and even more so when he advises money launderer Van Zandt that he's got "some moves" he can make that ought to help him get rid of De Niro's character, McCauley, who has threatened to kill him. Two women in this movie deserve special mention simply because they look so good in it --Ashley Judd as Chris's wife and Amy Breneman as Neil's girlfriend. The latter never looked better (and unfortunately never looked quite this good again) while the former certainly did have "a great ass," as Al Pacino noted.
Of course, the best part of the movie is the bank robbery in downtown LA, where Val Kilmer's energetic wielding of his automatic rifle steals the scene. It apparently inspired some would-be robbers who later also faced off against the LAPD with automatic weapons. Tom Sizemore as Michael, the electronics expert, is a sympathetic character who always gets the job done, whether it be efficiently neutralizing an alarm system or methodically dispatching an escaping assassin with a pump shotgun. Also likable is the grill man who in the blink of an eye decides to accept Neil's offer to fill in as wheel man for the bank job just because he is sick of his obnoxious weasel of a boss. This long movie (almost 3 hours) is nothing if not entertaining, a definite must-see.