Mann's masterwork

Rating: 10/10 (22 July 2008)

Ever since his breakthrough in television with Miami Vice, which he executive produced, Michael Mann has had an eye for cops, and more specifically their relationship with the criminals they track down. Manhunter, his superb Hannibal Lecter film, showed this in a most admirable fashion, but it is Heat that will be remembered as his crowning achievement, one of the few must-see thrillers of the '90s (or of all time, for that matter).
The title, as far as I can tell, comes from a quote in the movie: "Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner". That's the motto Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) observes every day, since every single second matters in his job: robbing banks. He has a great team working with him (Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, Jon Voight), but if it became necessary he would leave all of them behind. Even his affair with a woman named Eady (Amy Brenneman, fresh out of NYPD Blue) is ultimately meaningless, just another expendable element of his life.
Paradoxically, that same mantra could sum up the life of Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino), an LAPD officer who finds it hard to juggle his ever demanding job and his fragile (third) marriage, which comes complete with a troubled stepdaughter (Natalie Portman). If he could, he would dump everything and commit wholeheartedly to his work. And the opportunity presents itself quite quickly when Neil's latest bank job doesn't end as well as usual and Vincent begins to close in on the previously elusive criminal, beginning a battle of wits like few have ever seen.
Being a Mann film, Heat is technically perfect: from the cinematography to the spot-on editing (especially in the central heist sequence) to the locations (L.A. is to the director like New York to Scorsese), the film shows its big budget credentials without hesitation, making for one hell of a visual experience. Light and dark converge into a new shape, emphasizing Mann's point: the "good" and the "bad" guy aren't that distinguishable anymore.
That leads to the other asset Heat can boast, namely Mann's key theme of hunted and hunter being substantially equal: Manhunter suggested this in a quite eerie way, and it returns here in one of the most talked-about scenes in movie history - the coffee shop encounter between Hanna and McCauley. "I don't know how to do anything else" remarks the tired cop. "Neither do I" comments the crook. "And I don't much want to either". "Neither do I" McCauley repeats. There's a very thin line between the two sides of the coin, and Mann hasn't just blurred it, he's erased it for good.
The coffee shop sequence also highlights Heat's main trump card: Pacino and De Niro. Justly described as the best actors of their generation, Mann's opus gives them the chance to actually meet on screen (which didn't occur, for obvious reasons, in their previous shared credit, The Godfather: Part II) and contrast their trademark personas - De Niro's controlled calm against Pacino's rage-fueled outbursts. They are accompanied by a terrific supporting cast (Kilmer, Voight, Portman, plus briefer roles for Ashley Judd and Simpsons voice actor Hank Azaria), but it's their combined presence that makes Heat the gem it is: the best philosophical crime movie ever, and, alongside The Usual Suspects, the best thriller of the '90s.