One of the best action films ever made

Rating: 10/10 (11 January 2014)

I am a huge fan of action movies but they are often unaffecting and emotionally void. With Heat, this definitely isn't the case. I watched this out of interest because it was well regarded, on the IMDb top 250 and it sounded enjoyable but this story of a angst filled cop pursuing a skilled bank robber (Robert De Niro and Al Pacino- together on screen at last!) was thrilling, moving, complex and blew me away. This is one of those rare movies which is virtually flaw free. The length is a bit excessive but not a minute is wasted and the running time is full of blazing action set pieces containing one of the best shootouts of all time but the human drama is jaw dropping. Every single character is developed. The film is incredibly powerful, with the ending being genuinely tear jerking and frequent emotionally intense scenes, but what's the show stopper? 2 men having a cup of coffee.
Pacino and De Niro are both amazing, while Michael Mann's cinematography and suspense scenes are mind blowing. The most confusing thing of all is why the academy didn't give this a single nomination. Even if you're not an action fan, this isn't really an action movie. It's a character study that happens to be about cops and robbers. Heat is a film so powerful yet thrilling the experience of watching it is slightly surreal and despite being almost 3 hours long it felt a lot shorter than that. Some of the characters are slightly cliché (Although developed ones) and the film could have been shorter, but it is the sort of movie which many other action directors (Michael Bay) won't be able to dream of living up to, and even though it's an action movie, it contains some of the best shootouts, character studies, LA visuals- and the best conversation over a cup of coffee- in the history of cinema.
10/10