This film is way flatter than any film starring Pacino and DeNiro has any business being

Rating: 2/10 (9 June 2015)

This film is way flatter than any film starring Pacino and DeNiro has any business being. Choppy, inconsistent, overdrawn and forced, the salvageable bits of Heat can fill a thimble (I kinda liked that one scene where you wonder what DeNiro is going to do when he learns where Waingro is hiding).
Al Pacino plays the generic LAPD policeman - the wisecracking, gum-chewing dry attitude dude who quips one-liners over dead bodies and issues swift businessman-like orders. He lurches from dry to overacting with such aplomb that he remarks to one character "yeah, I get over the top don't I?" It almost sounds like Pacino is explaining to the audience how the change came about. I can't believe DeNiro filmed this the same time he was bringing the nuanced Ace Rothstein to life in Scorsese's Casino. DeNiro's character in this film is so flat that he can be summarised in one word - "serious". The rest of the cast, which includes some surprisingly good character actors like Danny Trejo and Tom Sizemore, is completely and utterly forgettable. Only Natalie Portman kept my attention for more than a moment, and her character is ultimately completely redundant to the film.
Heat's editing is very choppy, and there is some hideous green screen in places. The screenplay is heinous, as it lurches between flat dialogue and formulaic plot points - the scene where McCauley and Eady meet is so generic that I knew what was coming before it happened. His romance, along with the affair of Pacino's wife, Portman's troubles with depression, and the entire subplots of Dennis Haybert, Hank Azaria, William Fichtner, Ashley Judd and even Jon Voight could have been cut. Haybert literally only needed to exist as a fill in driver, so why did we have to watch all these scenes about his struggles? It just makes the film drag on so very much (an hour passes without anything actually happening).
The film doesn't even try to constrain itself with police protocol - police stakeouts involve five guys gawking over a balcony down into the alley below. The cops discover information either by needlessly complicated methods (i.e. introducing new, unimportant characters) or by ridiculously simplistic ones ("oh I get it!").
The most heinous scene in the film is the shootout in downtown LA. Apparently Val Kilmer is still Batman, because the cops somehow couldn't hit him ONCE yet he and DeNiro rained lead hell on the LAPD. Additionally, the police fired willy-nilly into civilians with no casualties. Pacino is unable to shoot through Kilmer or DeNiro's plot armour when he has a clear line of sight, but he can headshot Tom Sizemore even when he has a hostage and human shield? Where is the consistency? The whole street fight was just excruciating for me.
People call Heat a character study. I say the characters are boring and I cannot believe I spent over 160 minutes watching their bloated, boring story. Go watch Scent of a Woman or Casino instead.