More than a crime drama

Rating: 10/10 (31 January 2012)

There are rare occurrences that elevate a director, into a great director. This can be seen in "Taxi Driver" by Martin Scorsese, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" by Steven Spielberg and "Magnolia" by Paul Thomas Anderson. These are movies in which people begin to realize the true talent that these directors have in making their films.
Watching "Heat" for the first time years ago it was obvious that this film had more then what you would expect from a crime drama, but it's only after a couple viewing that you can begin to really appreciate what this movie has to offer. Which is the experience of watching the world that cops and robbers live in.
When this was first released it was promoted strongly on the fact that it was going to be the first movie where Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro were going to share screen time (I'm aware they were in Godfather Part II together but they didn't have any scenes together in that). After all the promotion of this some people were disappointed to have to wait for more then have the movie for them to have a scene together, but honestly I preferred it the way it is. There are far to many movies that have cops and robbers sharing numerous scenes together and after so many it's just hard to believe that it's real. In this they share a couple scenes and only one real conversation which is perhaps the best scene of the movie.
The plot of the movie is something that you've heard before, where the movie flourishes and excels beyond the commonality of these sorts of movies is in the dialogue and emotional input that is put into each scene. There is really no scene that seems "scripted" or "fake". There are certain points in the movie where DeNiro pauses for a moment as if he's trying to think of what to say in that situation instead of just regurgitating what the screenplay tells him to say. This is one of those extremely rare films where you can literally see no one else in any of the roles that are cast, it's easy to tell that they went into real casting calls and picked the best person for each and every role.
Even with all the beautiful dialogue and conversations that go on throughout the film, I have always been and will always be a fan of the silent parts where we all know what's going on and the director has enough faith in the audience not to insult our intelligence by dumbing down any of these parts at all. There is one particular scene between Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer) and his wife Charlene Shiherlis (Ashley Judd) that is perhaps of the best examples of this. Instead of words there is music in the back round of this scene that gives away the emotional feelings that are occurring during this scene. There is another scene involving Lt. Vincent Hanna's (Al Pacino) stepdaughter (Natalie Portman) that is along the same lines and is another one of those unforgettable scenes that lesser movies would not even bother to incorporate.
There is everything right about this movie, there have been movies which after a couple viewings they begin to lose their enjoyment. This is not one of those, this is one of the rare movies that will end up being a classic crime drama along the same lines as "The Maltese Falcon" and "Key Largo".
It's hard these days to find anything with the same kind of impact as the older crime dramas but that just might have to do with the less and less attention that writers are giving to the characters in these sorts of movies since their target audience it seems doesn't want to be intrigued by complex plot points, they just want to see stuff blow up and cars chasing each other around the block for half an hour. However when a movie like this comes along it's hard not to appreciate it's courage in taking a kind of movie like this and elevating it to greatness.
"Heat" is Michael Mann's masterpiece.