A watchable crime with De Niro and Pacino

Rating: 6/10 (18 May 2016)

'Heat' is one of these films that tried hard at being an epic. It's pretentiously long running just under THREE HOURS, and is really nothing, and I do mean nothing more than another fine action-crime drama type film that depicts the innerworkings of gangsters with their plans for heists, vs the good guy coppers. It tries hard to produce a stage for De Niro vs Pacino, the evilly motivated but likable scum vs the very flawed but ultimately good guy, and of course they meet before the climactic ending and share and manifest a mutual respect for each other, how of course they are not so different in the end, that old chorus... but although, again, this film lets itself watched, even despite the very lengthy runtime, it's too much a caricature of what it sets out to do with very little intelligence in subtly, originality or reinvention at all. The women/family of the protagonists are just filler to add more matter to the plot and runtime, and although they highlight aspects of the main lead characters' personalities they are just as ordinary and unspecial as them, and the entire film. Good action scenes, a fine crime movie, but nothing more, really.