Heat

Michael Mann, USA 1995, 160 minutes

Michael Mann has had a relatively short career to date, but in it he has made some truly amazing films. From the meticulous Thief to the chilling Manhunter and the sumptuous Last Of The Mohicans, he has always shown a considerable flair for character and mood; two qualities lacking in a lot of today's fare.

In this, a remake of L.A. Crimewave, his 1990 TV movie, Mann pulls off the awesome feat of putting two of the most exciting actors of their generation - Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino - together on screen for the first time.

DeNiro plays expert thief Neil MacCauley and Pacino is Vincent Hannah, the cop assigned to track him down. It sounds silly to say that's it, but as far as broad brush strokes are concerned, it is. What we have here is a sumptuous, languid game of cat-and-mouse with both parties starting from way back and gradually, after a methodical series of manoeuvres, closing in on each other for a meeting that they know, and accept, only one of them will walk away from.

Mann takes his time, pitting the two against each other with the precision of a chess grand master, while infusing the atmosphere with an overpowering sense of fatalism. When they finally meet it is clear MacCauley is as happy with his role as the bad guy as Hannah is with his. In another life, they may have even been friends.

A haunting score works together with exquisitely cold, shimmering cinematography to give an air of poignancy to this, the most poetic cops-and-robbers movie ever made.

"Heat packs more into one cop movie than the entire output of the last five years - *****" - Empire

Review by Ben Stephens
Taken from EUFS Programme 1996-97