pretty tight for a 3 hour crime epic

Rating: 10/10 (25 June 2009)

Heat comes on TV, and you have see what scene is on. More than likely you'll get something really worth watching, sometimes for five minutes, other times for the whole running time. I was too young to see Heat in the theater, but soon after TV made it available. It's a film that takes to the professionals on both sides, and we have a great deal of empathy for both of them, for the tired but spot-on detective (Al Pacino) and, yes, even the ruthless criminal (Robert De Niro). Michael Mann's script is key, but it's a sense of the story, of the mood that all of those locations in Los Angeles brings, the streets, the little crevices, the diners, the architecture, the concrete and steel.
There's also philosophy to Heat. It may not be a deep essay like Godard, but who'd want, or perhaps expect, it to a big Hollywood production? It's simple: Never have anything in your life that you can't walk out on in thirty seconds flat, if you spot the heat coming around the corner. This is the stance the super tough and least vulnerable criminal mastermind in 90s American cinema Neil makes, and its potent enough to match up against the hard-line stance that a detective has with his prey. The plot moves at a good pace and the wheels keep going along and Mann has these powerhouse sequences here and there (most notably the big bank robbery that turns into a battle with machine guns on the street outside), and of course the cast is large and amazing throughout (a who's who from Val Kilmer to Natalie Portman to Danny Trejo to Wes Studi).
But what makes Heat endurable for such a long length aren't the actors but its substance. Mann's film is about something, about the conventions of cops and robbers, and that's what makes it work as well as it does. Sure, seeing a match-up of titans in that diner scene is enough to recommend it, but a combination of factors, of cast and direction and script, of danger and action and quiet moments, make it a kind of modern classic.