Too much Heat

Rating: 5/10 (13 June 2005)

There's a potentially great two hour movie in here someplace. Unfortunately the reality is what we have here is a mediocre three hour movie. So many scenes which could have, and should have, been cut. So many characters that are so woefully underdeveloped they serve no purpose at all and end up just taking up space. And taking up time, lots and lots of time. There are certainly some exciting and fascinating sequences but in too many places the film just slogs along with nothing of any significance whatsoever occurring. Ultimately Heat frustrates because you see what it could have been. It has a terrific cast and what should have been a terrific story if only it was told better.
Of course the vast majority of hype which surrounded Heat concerned the two lead actors. Robert De Niro plays Neil McCauley, who leads a group of professional thieves in Los Angeles. Al Pacino plays Vincent Hanna who is the lead investigator on McCauley's trail. De Niro's performance is reliably brilliant. He is undoubtedly the best thing this move has to offer. He shows how subtlety can be a great asset for an actor, something Pacino apparently forgot somewhere along the way. Pacino's Vincent is a guy who goes through life screaming things at the top of his lungs for no good reason and this act gets really tired really quickly. Perhaps not coincidentally the only time in the whole film that Pacino comes back down to Earth is when he's seated across a table from De Niro. Robert De Niro, a calming influence? Who'd have ever thought it? The rest of the cast is littered with big names who have nothing much to do besides watch De Niro scheme and Pacino scream. Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, Jon Voight, Ashley Judd, Amy Brenneman, Natalie Portman, Hank Azaria...they're all here. But we never really get to know much of anything about their characters. It's De Niro and Pacino, Pacino and De Niro, all the time. Whenever De Niro or Pacino isn't on the screen it feels as if the movie is just killing time. When these other lesser characters see their respective stories ultimately play out it's hard not to think, "OK, whatever, I don't really care what happened to them anyway. What are De Niro and Pacino up to?" From its beginning, through its slow, plodding middle and all the way up to its inevitable conclusion Heat is all about Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. Maybe if Pacino could have toned down his act and the film didn't take so long to get where you know it was going all along, that wouldn't have been such a bad thing.