One of the Best Crime Thrillers Ever Made!!!

Rating: 10/10 (8 January 2014)

"Miami Vice" creator Michael Mann made one of the best heist thrillers of all time with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. "Heat" pits a seasoned LAPD detective against a hardened criminal in an intelligent but exciting cat & mouse crime epic that considers the public and private aspects of the lives of the heroes and the villains. Indeed, we get to see how the cop lives after hours and how the criminal survives when he isn't committing crime. Clocking in at 172 minutes, "Heat" blazes up more often than not when it isn't smoldering with suspense. Pacino and De Niro make terrific adversaries, while Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, Jon Voight, Ted Levine, Wes Studi, and Kevin Gage round out a first-class supporting cast. Diane Verona, Amy Brenneman, and Ashley Judd play the romantic interests respectively for Pacino, De Niro, and Kilmer. Of course, if Mann had left out the soap operatic elements, "Heat" would have been even better. Basically, Pacino and De Niro are at each other's throats for most of the 172 minutes, and they have one scene together in a diner where they read each other the riot act about what they will be compelled to do if they encounter one other in the line of duty. The De Niro character has a great line involving 30 seconds when you know everything will change. A shady entrepreneur William Fichtner takes up about a third of the action in a subplot that grows out of the armored car robbery at the outside. The way that De Niro and company knock over the armored car company is flat out neat. They ram the armored car with a huge tow truck. Everything looks authentic in this urban western. The bank robbery and shoot-out in the streets of L.A. is choreographed beautifully with most of the cops armed with automatic weapons. The big finale at LAX reminded me of the conclusion to "Bullitt" when Stever McQueen ventured out onto the airport runaway to catch a killer. Elliot Goldenthal furnishes Mann an orchestral score that underlines the tension, suspense, and heartache in the narrative. Lenser Dante Spinotti makes everything look larger-than-life and gritty.