An average thriller, overrated by the presence of De Nero and Pacino

Rating: 4/10 (11 February 2000)

A lot of people have made a lot of fuss over Heat. After seeing it for myself I really can't understand why. Aside from the presence of the two leads Heat is essentially a cops n' robbers saga given a little extra dimension and a lot of extra gloss. I can't fault Michael Mann's style. His stark vision of Los Angeles is excellent. The opening shot with the elevated train coasting past the camera with the haunting synth score is truly memorable. However, when the first shot of a film is the best part, you're in trouble. Mann as writer fairs much worse. His script (actually based on his 1989 TV movie LA Takedown) is a mess; padded his unnecessary subplots and characters; it substitutes intrigue for confused plotting. The near 3-hour running time is sheer self-indulgence, when the concept behind this film is complete mouse of idea: that cops and robbers are very much alike. In reality this so-called character development that Mann has put at the front of his film is just a story of male bonding between two highly unlikeable and unsympathetic characters. Pacino as the cop and De Nero as the robber are both well-worn clichés that are slightly deeper than normal. Pacino as an angst ridden cop, on his third marriage and De Nero as the calculating psycho criminal who plans his life so that he can drop everything and leave at 30 seconds notice when the heat is on. Both these characters are as unlikeable as the other is and this blunts much of the tension. A brilliantly staged gun battle on the streets of LA is wasted because we don't care which character comes off the better. The two leads don't do anything for their roles either. Neither gives performances that equal their best and the film's main purpose is simply to bring them on screen together. They appear twice together. Once in a coffee shop to discuss their morals and at the film's ending, which more than resembles that of Bullit. Clearly Mann has attempted to say that police and criminal are indivisible, and this is probably why we don't sympathise with either of them. This is such an unoriginal concept that has been explored as far back as the 70s with The French Connection and Serpico it also is the reason why, the film is overrated. Why should we spend 3 hours with two people we don't like?