Disappointing, to say the least

Rating: Null/10 (16 August 2002)

Heat is another embodiment of the cool crime movie, and oh does it try ever so hard to be cool. It has fast cars, shootouts in the streets, four consecutive love interests, hockey masks and even a blue light filter. Oh and let's not forget the mandatory one-liner that is in this case repeated three times. Michael Mann must have been thinking that the presence of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro on opposite sides of the law would make a guaranteed hit. He couldn't have been further from the truth. Just like 2001's "The Score", which paired De Niro with Marlon Brando in a film similar in content and tone, this movie was geared to disappoint from the outset. Character development is ankle-deep, but the worst part about it is that Mann tries so hard. Had the film been merely an hour and a half gangster shoot-em-up flick, it would have been bearable, but Mann's film is a pseudo-character drama, soap-operaish at times, unbelievably excruciating at others. This is not to mention, of course, the plot impossibilities that one comes to expect in this ubiquitous genre. How does De Niro escape so many situations in which he is perceivably doomed? For a director to request suspension of disbelief from his audience he must in turn reward them for their loyalty. But Heat was little more than a self-indulgent waste of three hours.