Better than Bullitt

Rating: 8/10 (13 March 2003)

The score of the film is one of those things that many of us take for granted. It is sweeping and full of emotion though truncated when the film is viewed on American television. The lighting is at times searing and at times it is drab and lifeless, all timed to the story's continuity. The climactic scene in the shadows of the landing runway of LAX is terse and as it might happen. The running under the landing and taxing airplanes is right out of Bullitt, when Steve McQueen is chasing his mute witness across the tarmac only to gun him down in the baggage claim in front a waiting crowd.
Bullitt has its car chase and its Jacqueline Bisset, but Heat has its opening robbery in hockey masks, the bank robbery shootout on San Figueroa in Downtown LA, the coffee between DeNiro and Pacino that sets the tone for the end of the film in the final act where one must die at the hands of the other.