Heat (1995)
Directed by Michael Mann
Obsessive master thief Neil McCauley leads a top-notch crew on various daring heists throughout Los Angeles while determined detective Vincent Hanna pursues him without rest. Each man recognizes and respects the ability and the dedication of the other even though they are aware their cat-and-mouse game may end in violence.
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16 films that influenced Heat
What critics say influenced Heat
There's a non-L.A. movie that seems an obvious influence here: Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch."
Its point of view about the innate violence of men is essentially that of Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch," but while the idea itself remains valid and even relevant, Mann cancels all that out with a ridiculous ending that suggests some sort of final spiritual, metaphysical mind-meld.
'HEAT' IS AN ODD THOUGH OFTEN ENTERtaining blend of "The Asphalt Jungle" and "Oprah," a traditional cops-and-robbers story weirdly fitted out with long, earnest discussions of interpersonal relationships.
In its broadest outlines, "Heat" is an ironic/tragic heist movie in the tradition of John Huston's "The Asphalt Jungle," in which character determines everything.
The notion of criminals as lonely, existential warriors is of course not new (Jean-Pierre Melville's "Le Samourai," starring Alain Delon, did it especially well), but it's rarely done with as much dexterity and panache as Mann and company have provided.
And while we’re at it, “Heat” borrows heavily from Woo’s “The Killer”, which is also about a cop and a criminal who bond together.
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It's also a pity that after so much brilliance Mann should succumb to a derivative ending - an airport chase, à la The Killing and Bullitt, and a tidy if bloody resolution in which the wrong man gets killed.
And he uses the rest of the cast that way, too -- including Voight as the ravaged-looking Nate and Bud Cort (of "Harold and Maude") as a smarmy restaurant manager.
From "Thief" and "Manhunter" to TV's "Miami Vice" and "Crime Story," Mann always gets a special look to his thrillers, a drop-dead veneer, a mechanical gleam.
"Heat," from the Michael Mann who created "Miami Vice" and "Police Story," as well as "Thief," "Manhunter" and "Last of the Mohicans," is exactly what you might expect, only a lot better: A big, fat, full-tilt boogie, rockin', rollin' heavy metal concert for outlaws, outlaw wannabes, macho sentimentalists and gun cranks -- everyone who's ever felt a dribble of testosterone in his or her endocrine system.
As written and directed by Michael Mann (Thief, Manhunter, The Insider), Heat is the apotheosis of a career-long interest in obsessive professionalism (seen in heroic and anti-heroic efficiency experts) and the tension between unruly law and criminal disorder.
Heat is undoubtedly better than its forbear in nearly every possible way, for the simple reason that Mann was making the story the way he'd wanted to in the first place, and doing so with a level of care never previously seen in his films, though Mohicans and Thief especially were awfully controlled and careful movies.
Though Mann is best known for directing "The Last of the Mohicans" and executive producing TV's "Miami Vice," moviegoers with a fondness for crime stories will remember "Thief," his polished 1981 feature debut starring James Caan as a master safecracker and Tuesday Weld as the woman in his life.
You know you will get high style and hard-bitten romanticism from the man who made "Thief" and "The Last of the Mohicans," and TV's "Miami Vice" and "Crime Stow."
Just when it seemed that the only hope for crime movies lay in the postmodernist artifice of films like "Pulp Fiction," Mann reinvests the genre with brooding, modernist conviction.
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We've seen it in "In the Line of Fire" (Clint Eastwood and John Malkovich), "Cliffhanger" (Sylvester Stallone and John Lithgow) and others.
We've seen it in "In the Line of Fire" (Clint Eastwood and John Malkovich), "Cliffhanger" (Sylvester Stallone and John Lithgow) and others.