Heat, revisited 20 years on

IvaBigWun wrote: »

For a film that has relationships at the heart of it, the ones between Hanna (Pacino) and his wife and in particular McCauley (De Niro) and Eady dont really gel together. The chemistry between the latter pair just isnt there and in hindsight Amy Brenneman as Eady was terrible casting. It jarred with me on first viewing and it still does so now.

Isn't it more their inability to have a normal relationship? That these guys are dysfunctional except when it comes to their career. That's what they do well, that's where their invested. It's a long time since I've seen it but I don't remember Brenneman standing out for any reason. Is it her though, or is De Niro even capable of selling that side of the character you're looking for?

Great sound design. It's mid 90s, so I also don't have to put up with the Viper system.

edit: I'd also not sure if I did see it again, If I could judge in isolation. I'd find to hard separate out from the rest of Mann's output and his fascination with Alpha types. For me, there's this uncomfortably adolescent "Walter Mitty" type quality adulation to the whole thing. I picture him annoying "Andy McNabb" between takes on set, getting him tell some stories, and then disappearing into his trailer for some alone time. I think Alan Partridge would get on well with him.

I think the shoot out is the best in any film I've ever seen. The way it's got no music, just the guns ringing out and echoing around the streets is fantastic.

Sifting through the [cinematic] detritus, we come to Heat. A masterpiece. One side of the argument: the female characters, and their relationships with their men, let the film down. The flipside: the film is considerably enriched, as an example of the crime genre, by including strong women (yes, strong) who are not afraid to call out their men on all this macho bull**** (okay, Mann has Venora say a couple of arch lines that many complained were right out of a Making Modern Relationships Work manual - but Justine gave as good as she got, with Hanna getting all self-righteous about his angst and how he has to hold on to it...). Some plot points jar: why did McCauley need to include a total unknown quantity - Waingro - in their otherwise meticulously planned armoured truck heist? The simple answer is that Waingro was needed, as his character is possibly the most integral one in terms of getting the narrative strands to stitch together - structurally, Waingro is crucial, even if he is a metaphorical stress fracture in titanium. I'll buy that. I'll also buy that Richard Torena will spit "slick" out just as Vincent is leaving, thus giving Hanna Neil and his whole damn crew.
People talk about Hanna and McCauley being two sides of the one coin - but how about extending that a bit? McCauley's crew is almost a mirror-image of Hanna's. Okay, Hanna has a Native American working for him, McCauley has a Mexican; but during the shootout, blonde good-looking Chris gets shot in the shoulder, and blonde good-looking Detective Schwartz is shot in the arm (and during the central bank heist, McCauley's crew has picked up an African American getaway driver, mirroring Hanna's African American Sergeant Drucker); Hanna's right-hand man (Bosko) is killed - McCauley's right-hand man is killed (Cheritto). Ah, the postmodernistic, dead 'tec duality of man.
These are real people (and, yes, the famale-male relationships help here too). But it's cinema, pure and simple. A contradiction? Let me put it this way: I wish McCauley hadn't smiled ruefully, bathed in white light, and swerved the car to take care of that last loose end (Waingro) before heading off into iradescent algae-inflected freedom; but Waingro said it himself (only he was too thick to realise its full implications) - "He's real thorough - he ain't gonna forget about you." I wish that happened in the narrative. But, cinematically, the ending is sheer perfection.

It's based on a real shootout that did happen in the states. Two men wearing very heavy body armor form head to toe and armed with a few assault rifles each held off police on the streets for an hour or so. The police handguns and shotguns could not take them down so a few of them went to a local gun shop and got a few AR15 assault rifles to take them down.

Actually that happened in 1997 but it wasn't far off what Heat showed on screen.

Been years since I saw it, great film. Full of great moments but the awesome bang of those assaults rifles reverberating off all the high rise buildings still sticks in the mind!