story with profound sense and work of beauty

Rating: 9/10 (20 August 2019)

It's not a secret, that Michael Mann's 'Heat' (1995) and other movies were a great influence on Christopher Nolan's 'The Dark Knight' (2008). The 'Heat' is a long movie that requires patience. One can call it a telephoto movie, as the frames are wide open and the background is compressed. That's how Michael Mann made sure that viewers grasp the city as a character too. Personally, I love the telephoto movies; they give you the liberty to absorb more details from the environment of the scenes, my favorite one is 'Foxcatcher' (2014), shot on 35mm/16:9 frame.
Apart from the visual style and bluish impression, there are some obvious parallels between the 'Heat' and 'The Dark Knight'; the famous bank robbery scene and a face to face confrontation of the hero and villain, where for the few moments they are like the two different faces of a same coin. The dialogue in the 'Heat' is;
HANNA - "My life's a disaster zone. I got a wife. We're passing each other on the down slope of a marriage. My third. Because I spend all my time chasing guys like you around the block."
NEIL - "A guy told me one time: Don't get attached to anything you can't walk out on in 30 seconds, if you feel the heat around the corner. So if you're chasing me and you gotta move when I move, how do you expect to keep a family?"
Here, a skilled and sophisticated criminal Neil sets a rule of no personal attachments, while Lieutenant Hanna is trapped between his family life and the police life. One can draw its parallel with 'The Dark Knight', where Batman seeks an alternative of himself, so that he can also have a personal life he has been sacrificing for the Gotham.