Masterful on all counts

Rating: 10/10 (30 November 2004)

For some reason I cannot stop thinking about this film lately.
You know that feeling of having seen it about 3 or 4 times in the last 12 months is not enough? That's what I feel at the moment.
I rate it as Mann's best. It's his most kinetic,vibrant(for a film mostly shot in steely blue),agonising,stirring,brash,violent and brilliance in such a simple story.
What games did you play as a young kid? Cops and robbers.Good guy.Bad guy.
We all know De Niro and Pacino could have been either main part,but can you imagine it any other way round. Pacino doing ice cool calm? De Niro the manic outbursts,arms flailing? It wouldn't work. We know these men now.We know neither will stop at what they do.And yet there is no way either would stop the other.Unless they had too. Which leads us too the characters. All of them.
This is an extended family where you feel you know all of them without knowing anything at all. The cops are similar to the robbers and vice-versa. Perhaps Mann is telling us were all the same.Except in what we do.Every speaking part holds substance in this movie, and the support cast is astonishing when you actually read the caliber of who appeared in this film.Tom Sizmore, Val Kilmer,Ashley Judd,Ted Levine,Wes Studi,Hank Azaria,William Fitchner,Henry Rollins,Dennis Haysbert,Tom Noonan. And Natalie Portman, for chrissake! Try getting that cast again.
A real 10/10 film. And that Moby song at the end(God moving over the face of waters) gets me every time.