Heat (1999, DVD)

Heat (1995) is a near great cops and robbers movie. Al Pacino plays the main cop and Robert De Niro the main robber. The movie begins with De Niro and his gang with great violence attacking and looting an armored car. Pacino, as the homicide detective in charge of the case, is much impressed with the professionalism of the theft. Pacino is hell-bent to catch this highly skilled band of brigands who toward the end of the film rob a city bank of millions in a finely-tuned bloody shoot out.

One of the weak points early in the movie is when these professionals botch up the killing of one their one-time hired hands who foolishly killed one of the armored car guards. These men are suppose to be expert thieves, but they don t have enough sense to take this thug, who made their jobs less than perfect, to a private and secure place to off him. Instead they try to kill him in the open and when a cop car comes by it gives the thug a chance to escape. Even the escape is hard to fathom. But there you have it. Another flaw in the movie is the meeting and conversation that De Niro and Pacino have in a diner. Yet, since the dialogue between these two great actors is so interesting, you can almost forgive the writer for this odd scene.

Despite these flaws, Heat is hot and the director Michael Mann gives us a film that is exciting entertainment. It is so engrossing, I did not notice that the movie was nearly 3 hours long. It also stars Val Kilmer who is part of De Niro s gang and the beautiful and talented Ashley Judd.

The first movie that Pacino and De Niro were in together was, of course, Godfather, Part II . Yet, in that great film they never played face to face. In Heat we finally get to see them swap words and looks. If you love De Niro and Pacino, you will love their performances in this fine film.


[Note: I just read after scribbling this review that Mann had written a TV movie L.A. Takedown (1989) from which Heat is based on.]


(I had deleted this review earlier and am now posting it again.)