In the end, pretty underwhelming

Rating: 6/10 (22 April 2005)

HEAT has, of course, a terrific cast, but this sprawling, rambling, overlong, ultimately anticlimactic film is marred throughout by one of the more irritating clichés of cop dramas: the boring domestic scene in which the wife (or girlfriend) of the cop (or criminal) complains about how unfulfilled she is, the uncertainty of their relationship, how little she sees him, blah blah blah. In this one, it's hard-faced Diane Venora whining about how cop Al Pacino isn't THERE for her and her daughter (Natalie Portman), how she gets only part of his life, etc. Haven't we suffered through this boring situation in a hundred cop pictures? Then there are the uninteresting marital problems criminal Val Kilmer is having with Ashley Judd; who cares? Finally, there's the loony, preposterous, extraneous, wholly unbelievable relationship Robert De Niro has with Amy Brenneman, who plays a lovestruck artist/shopgirl who takes one look at De Niro, begins flirting with him, and is soon taking him to bed. Yeah, right: Here's a beautiful, glamorous-looking young woman who throws herself at a middle-aged, mean-and-careworn-and-greasy-looking guy who initially pretends to be a salesman and carries on a halting conversation worthy of a dullard. The relationship has no bearing on the plot that I could see; it's just an impediment and an annoyance. Thank God for the fast-forward on my remote.