Crime film that offers so much more.

Rating: 10/10 (29 January 2010)

9.6
Has there ever been a moment in your life where you found yourself battling hesitation, or having to make a difficult choice? If so, and that decision was ever to see the movie Heat or not, let me take the burden off your shoulders. Watch this movie.
Coming into this, I wasn't expecting much. I figured, sure, a crime movie. Great cast... Michael Mann behind the camera. It has to be pretty good. At least everyone says it is. It's better than that. This is one of those films where I have to erase everything that I knew or thought I knew about it per what everyone else told me, or according to the general opinion about it. Then I have to watch the movie myself, and let every single scene soak in.
Heat is essentially a cops and robbers story. You experience the story from both points of views. You see the families of both sides. The good, and the hard times. The initiatives, incentives, and personalities behind both lifestyles. Then it melts them both together. You think, "yeah, these men are performing horrible acts, and overall bad choices", but you start to care about them as human beings. You want the good guys to win, but at the same time you don't want to see the others fail. There's one scene in particular which brings both worlds together. It's as if the cop and the robber went out for a cup of coffee.
I'm not going to say much about the acting. After all, these are men who act, and don't talk much. "Stop talking, okay, Slick", a robber tells another in the beginning of the film. They get things done and don't really show much emotion while on the job. Al Pacino seasons the detective's role with the salt that he usually brings to the table. Mostly though, what you have here is a story with down to earth characters and down to earth performances.
The directing is phenomenal. Michael Mann and crew manage to bring tension to the right scenes, adrenaline where its needed, and just about every other emotion the film brings out at just the right time. The movie slows down and speeds up exactly when it needs to. The use of ambient sound and music is great here. Sometimes I couldn't determine what was an effect, what was music and what was ambiance. There are some shots that are close ups of peoples faces and the emotions on them that are of my favorite scenes in the movie. The movie goes from low-key conversations to high speed shootouts. Tactful scrutiny to emotional outbursts. And never misses a beat.
This movie, or maybe I should say film, gives you everything that you'd expect from a crime movie, yet offers so much more. It doesn't glorify crime or the background processes of it. It unveils the people behind it instead, and makes you think about what type of people do these things. They are not good people, that's for sure. But you can't help but think that their skills could have been put to better use. Maybe as detectives, the other side of the crime. Still, you're just going to have to forget about everything that I just said, as well as forget about what you've heard about this movie, and go watch it for yourself. It stands apart from the rest.