Just something about it

Rating: 9/10 (3 August 2009)

This is one of the few, if not the only, movies of its genre that I can (and do) watch again and again. Other reviewers are more adept than I at putting their finger on precisely what makes the difference (Pacino and De Niro side by side, the added emotional ambiguity of the various characters) - it's not as if a person watching Heat for the first time would find it excessively cerebral or removed from the action-movie mold. Nor is it lacking in the sort of seedy LA-centric flash for which Michael Mann is, for better or worse, so well known (see, for example, Collateral). But whatever it is, it's extremely compelling and one that has earned it a place in my DVD collection.