Should have been called Baggage rather than Heat

Rating: 4/10 (8 August 2013)

An old piece of advice given to writers is "simplify". It is a pity such advice was not followed here, since the proliferation of subplots and other baggage (much of it irrelevant) make this film too unwieldy and long-winded for its own good.
The build up to the much anticipated meeting between Pacino (Hanna) and De Niro (McCauley) sums up the film.. First Hanna is pointlessly seen in a helicopter before he is set down to follow McCauley in a car. Then Hanna has McCauley pull pver, McCauley is seen preparing to use his gun, Hanna gets out of his car, his own gun in hand, he steps up to McCauley's car and says "let's do coffee!"
This was clearly meant to to an epic build up to an epic scene, but its effect is bathetic (and even pathetic).Even the meeting scene itself is mediocre, loosely written and rambling, like the film. Would there be anything notable about it if it were not Pacino and De Niro involved?
The main plot is the hoary "heist goes wrong", but one of the criminal gang, Waingro, turns out to be a serial killer. He murders a prostitute in an unnecessary series of scenes, irrelevant to the main story arc since Waingro only gets his comeuppance (and not because of his serial killing) when he joins up with Van Zant (part of another sub-plot that I won't go into, although more integrated into the story).
Most of the baggage here is of the emotional kind. Just about everyone has overwrought emotional scenes with their loved ones including the briefly seen black getaway driver (formerly working as a chef...the scenes of him before he makes his brief appearance as the driver had me scratching my head) and even the murdered prostitute has emotive shots of her family. Such scenes as this distract from the main narrative but there are even more anguished relationship scenes concerning the main protagonists.
Neil McCauley (De Niro) has vowed to leave his woman at a drop of hat, but has apparently found 'true love'. Shiherlis (Kilmer) is a drunk gambler whose wife is leaving him until De Niro Godfather-like instructs her to stay. She has a lover who is blackmailed by the police into bringing her to them. Hanna (Pacino) has both wife and daughter problems. His wife is sleeping around while his daughter is suicidal.
If all this sounds confusing, I can assure you there is much more and the film takes us down every one of these blind alleys one at a time.
Despite the film lingering so lovingly on irrelevancies, important issues remain unresolved. Why, for instance, at the end does Hanna (the cop) take a fire arm from another policeman but not tell him to help him catch McCauley? This sets up an implausible and not very good, one on one shoot out and the unconvincing 'brothers in arms' handshake between the two as if Hanna had forgotten all those that McCauley (including cops) has murdered in cold blood.
Likewise the relationships are left hanging at the end. What happens to Shiherlis and indeed his wife? Do they sail off into the sunset together? Not likely considering she is sleeping with someone else. And what about Hanna, his wife and their daughter? Nothing is resolved.
The general look of the film is good but some shots are chosen more for their 'coolness' than their purpose. The action scenes are gory, perhaps unnecessarily so. The shoot-out, using sub machine guns, is overblown and unconvincing, and very Hollywoodian, including Hanna's "threading the eye of a needle" shot to kill one of the gang holding a child hostage.
A note on performances. They tend to be rather overwrought at all times, with the cast being aware they are in an 'important' picture. Mumbling and histrionics are the order of the day. Pacino, in particular, delivers an over-the-top performance, often shouting his lines in a psychotic way that genuinely seems to surprise his fellow actors. If this was how Hanna was in real life, he would probably be under heavy sedation or psychiatric care.
There is just about enough good stuff amid the padding to make this watchable. But only just.