Heat

Rating: 8/10 (11 August 2008)

Heat isn't a romance, but in another time and place, it could have been. Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) and Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) never meet during the film's opening acts, although each is aware of the other. When they do finally meet, Hanna asks McCauley out for coffee. They sit in a café and discuss their jobs, their personal lives, and their relationship. The film then speeds toward its inevitable conclusion.
But Heat isn't a romance. It's a crime drama. And Hanna and McCauley are not lovers. Vincent is a police lieutenant, while Neil is a professional thief. The two's cat and mouse relationship forms the core of Michael Mann's masterful crime saga, one of the best in recent years.
Cop and robber first become aware of one another after a botched job, during which, after a new member's mistake, McCauley and his crew are forced to execute the guards of an armoured car. McCauley is now the proud owner of $1.6 million in anonymous bonds, which he plans to sell back to their original owner (William Fichtner).
As they begin to set this up, and plan one last "retirement" bank heist, McCauley and his crew come under surveillance by Hanna and his Robbery-Homicide squad. But it is not long before McCauley becomes wise, and Hanna ends up watching McCauley watching him.
The most interesting thing about Heat is the way it represents Hanna and McCauley as two sides of the same coin. Obviously there is the idea that they are essentially the same person, just on different sides of the law. But Mann's script presents us with a plethora of other contrasts and mirrors between the two antagonists.
Their personal lives, for instance. Hanna, an officer at the peak of his career, wants to be there for his third wife and her teenage daughter, but his devotion to his job gets in the way. On the other hand, McCauley, on the cusp of retirement, adheres to his philosophy of never having anything that you can't walk away from in thirty seconds, if you feel the eponymous heat around the corner. And yet, as he plans his final job, McCauley starts a relationship with a young graphic designer.
Pacino and De Niro are, of course, brilliant in their respective roles. De Niro, as the dignified and introverted McCauley, plays the same character he's been playing for years, but he plays it with impeccable skill. On the other side of the coin, Pacino has great fun with the more outgoing Hanna. Most of the time Pacino plays it straight, but once in a while there is a burst of almost maniacal ferocity, which places Hanna firmly in the role of the hunter.
While Heat is primarily a character study, centering largely on its two leads, that doesn't mean that there's no action. McCauley's bank robbery, and the following gun battle that plays out on the streets of L.A. between the thieves and Hanna's squad, makes for one hell of an action sequence. It is meticulously set up; the cinematography strikes the perfect balance between controlled and frenetic; and the fact that Mann manages to keep it up for over ten minutes is staggering.
This sequence, and the climactic showdown between Hanna and McCauley, form the action centrepieces of the film. But it is the carefully studied relationship between these two antagonists that raises Heat above the rest of the genre. A different situation, they could have been the best of friends. But as it stands, Hanna and McCauley present us with one of the greatest rivalries in recent cinema.
As an aside, Heat is also up for the "Loudest Gunshots in Cinema" award. Less auditorily stalwart viewers may want to consider earplugs.