Drama and style aplenty here

Rating: 9/10 (26 July 2012)

This crime-thriller is the story about a cop and a robber who mirror each other. The robber (Robert De Niro) has sacrificed a home life in order to maintain his life of crime, while the cop (Al Pacino) has a disastrous domestic life as a result of his work pursuing men like De Niro. The film follows both of their paths until their ultimate showdown.
Heat is a well written film, even if the story isn't especially brilliant. Where it scores is in its presentation. The acting personnel are extremely good. Apart from the two leads we have a very good support cast compromising the likes of Jon Voight, Val Kilmer, Henry Rollins and Tom Sizemore. But what Heat is primarily celebrated for is in its pairing of De Niro and Pacino. Up until that point these two titans of the screen had never shared screen time together. In this film they do, although it is very sparing. They meet in the middle of the film at a diner and at the end at a night-time air-field. Their encounters are certainly powerful and mean that the sparsity of them makes them all the more potent.
Director Michael Mann is the one who of course holds everything together. He controls the dramatics and injects the story with some very well staged action scenes. The shoot-out in the streets of L.A. being the most obvious example of this, it's a very finely choreographed sequence. And overall, the film has a very stylised look and feel. The photography is very good and visually the movie matches the dramatics on screen. Another Mann trademark present is the low-key soundtrack. In this one we have well-chosen electronica from the likes of Kronos Quartet, as well as a great original score by Elliot Goldenthal.
It may be slightly on the over-long side but aside from this Heat is a great combination of grade A acting and cinematic style. It's one of the best crime-thrillers from the 90's.