the illusion of reality.....

Rating: 9/10 (12 August 2009)

Heat's opening heist certainly takes you aback, but thats just a mild taste of whats about to come. Somewhere in the second act is an absolutely shocking, stomach-chewing battle sequence that may well be the most numbing action set-piece ever committed to film. Nothing else like it exists, not in the most awe-inspiring war movies nor in the most fiercely adored action flicks. Its something like what Peckinpah might have done, only ten times more riveting. Heat literally climaxes at this point - in an orgasmic fusillade of gunfire.
Heat is NOT a film about ideas or realism. Despite what countless viewers will have you believe, Heat offers no symbolism or metaphor, nothing beyond the literal surface story that we see. It has nothing deeper or psychologically real to say about anything, and certainly not about the so-called relationship between hunter and hunted. All that is a mere play on words and an escape for bored people. And by asking the viewer to identify and empathize with sociopaths, Heat proves that it has more to do with machismo than justice or reality.
Enough grousing about what Heat *isnt*. I come to praise this film, not bury it. We are all seduced by the spectral filmic experience that Heat is. Mann's unrivalled synthesis of sound, cinematography and music. He aims for a very high degree of visual verisimilitude, and attains it. There is no one else in Hollywood who can bend the logic of big-budget film-making in this way.
I'm just sorry that this film doesn't make me contemplate a thing, other than Mann's film technique. Never can I shake off the feeling that this a gigantic comic book, or a Western in techno trappings. He does try to convey something about the essential emptiness of these two men's lives, and how they seemingly need each other. Most viewers cant wait to label that as "existential angst". They might like to consider that maybe these two are just closet cases. That last scene especially is a bit too much.