The best movie

Rating: 10/10 (20 June 2006)

Well, it's up there anyway.
This is the rare flawless movie, a great movie by Michael Mann during a string of excellent movies, including The Last of the Mohicans, Heat, and The Insider. However, neither of those two films, while both fantastic, can raise a candle to Heat. The two-DVD set of the movie features lots of informative additional material including a commentary by Mann, featurettes about the journey from the screenplay to the screen, a documentary returning to sites visited during the movie, one about the famous scene featuring DeNiro and Pacino together on camera for the first time in their careers. The film itself is worthy of such attention as it addresses the lives of a group of accomplished, high-end bank robbers and the detectives charged with tracking them down in all their complexity, from the toll their careful planning and preparation takes on their relationships and personal lives, to the success of the operations themselves and the duties that the men undertake in their attempt to free $12 million from a bank. The title of the film refers to the proximity of stress, of challenges in a person's life, about the point at which stresses cause discomfort, at which one's comfort zone is disturbed, whether that be, as seems to be the case for the men (primarily) in this film who are work-obsessed, or whether it be through dysfunctional relationships, whether it be via unhealthy work relationships, via affairs uncompleted or something else. It speaks to the idea, finally that one aspect of a life is ultimately inseparable from another part.
The film is a nearly perfect depiction of the intersection of the complexities of relationships and work lives and how this complexity affects us. How Mann manages to make such a grown-up, subtly sophisticated movie is almost impossible to know, but Heat is a perfect balance of how lives cannot be compartmentalized forever and how actions have reactions, regardless of how long ago they happened, regardless of the physical distance from the person or the circumstances now. The film is so wonderful, that in summarizing it, I am unnerved that perhaps I might de-value it or not do it justice. The ensemble cast is fantastic, particularly Diane Venora as Justine Hanna, an artist and Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino in a superbly calibrated performance)'s third wife who is tired of being the third wheel in a marriage between Hanna and his career. Pacino and DeNiro are unsurprisingly excellent. Pacino plays, with perfect nuance, an accomplished detective whose job significantly supersedes all other elements of his life his life. That said, he is a good man who is a more devoted father to his step-daughter (Natalie Portman in her second major role) and whose focus is true and untainted by blandishments that some cops might not be able to resist. Neil McCauley (DeNiro) is a world-class thief and equally focused man but is a sociopath in that the loss of innocent life does not detract from his intent to complete a theft successfully. Ultimately, he is self-centered while Hanna is a devoted public servant. In most other ways, however, they are two sides of the same coin. He emphasizes to Hanna during their meeting in a coffee shop that, if circumstances get too hot (another instance of the meaning of the title of the movie), that he will leave the scene. As he puts it, "that's where the discipline comes in." However, he has no reluctance about taking a cop or a civilian in the way out, if they interfere with his goal of completing the robbery successfully. Tom Sizemore, Mykelti Williamson, and Dennis Haysbert in particular, are excellent in supporting roles, Sizemore evincing a devotion to Neil McCauley that bespeaks a man who owes a great deal to someone and perhaps the devotion of someone who is in awe of someone while Mykelti Williamson seems the ideal police officer for his compassion but also for his discipline and commitment to upholding laws. He is a tribute to excellent police work. Dennis Haysbert's part in the film is poignant and bespeaks the larger forces, the larger palette against which all our actions take place. He must decide between going straight in a thankless dead-end job for a cold, demanding boss taking one last job on the chance that it will be a big payday. Ashley Judd as Charlene Shihirlis, the wife of one of Neil's crew (Val Kilmer also fantastic, as Chris Shiherlis) is concerned that her relationship is dysfunctional and that her husband is not adequately committed to assuring its success, and that, as a result, her son will not be adequately cared for. She is a woman who, from Mann's commentary on the DVD imagines her as the wife of a high-end thief who grew up rough and had some unpleasant experiences growing up, but just wants to settle down and attempt to live a fairly conventional life. The tension between husband and wife and drives her into the arms of a small-time Vegas crook (the fantastic Hank Azaria who conveys small-time sliminess and short-sighted misogyny better, perhaps than anyone ever has in movie history).
Mann must be given ultimate credit for weaving all the strings together so adeptly and conveying the inter-relatedness of the different parts of our lives. His imagination and clear- eyed vision of what motivates and drives us all makes this film an epic, a film ostensibly about thieves and cops, but one which ultimately speaks to the higher purpose which all must find on this earth.