"HEAT" INCENDIARY

          Michael Mann's crime-drama masterpiece.
          From the director of The Last of the Mohicans this riveting story about an LAPD detective who puts the heat on a crack crew of heisters.
          Boasting a stellar cast, top-notch writing featuring clear, believable characters, intense action, and a great visual style, Heat (1995) is as much a thrill-ride as it is a lesson in the art of acting.
          One great thing Mann does is present a strong supporting cast casting against type. This blurs the lines and creates dimensionality to see actors famous for bad guy roles as the detectives hunting down the heisters. You don't want Scarface, Jame Gumb, and Magua out to get you.
          Not even if you're Jim Morrison. Val Kilmer plays the amiable tactical weapons specialist and personal friend of the mastermind, Neil McCauley (De Niro). Tom Sizemore and Danny Trejo round out Neil's core squad.
          Mann marbles in just the right amount of attention to the relationships of the characters, specifically the wives and girlfriends. Impaired by the severity of their partners' work, the women on both sides of the law are shut down from communicating, yet wind up being the redeemers of obsessed men.
          As Neil, De Niro is razor sharp, very controlled. His mistake is to take a new guy into a job, and maybe to allow himself to get close to anyone.
          Opposite him, Pacino is in standard rare form. In a scene where the lieutenant he plays is trying to find out something from an informant, Pacino suddenly explodes with the demand for the guy to tell him everything he knows, explodes in a way that could not be written on the page. Just one of many great moments showcasing the art of bringing the story to life.
          When the detective played by Ted Levine simply uses a pen as a pointer at a crime scene, it's incredible to remember he's the same actor famous as Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs.
          Ashley Judd, Henry Rollins, Tone Loc, Hank Azaria--disparate talent supporting established heavyweights. Ultimately, we know it's a showdown between Pacino and De Niro. The mutual respect the two characters develop for each other speaks at a weird meta-level to the respect we like to feel must be shared by the formidable thespians for each other.
          "At the drop of a hat," the lieutenant assures his men, "these guys will rock and roll."
          According to IMDb, Mann began his career writing for Starsky and Hutch, so it was very much in his skill-set when in 1984 he created his own successful buddy-cop TV show, Miami Vice. In 1986 he directed Manhunter, the first film to feature the character Hannibal Lecter.


HEAT
Starring Al Pacino,
Robert De Niro,
Val Kilmer,
Tom Sizemore,
Ashley Judd,
Ted Levine,
Wes Studi,
Natalie Portman,
Jon Voight
Written and directed by Michael Mann
Runtime 170 minutes
Rated R


Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE