Heat
★ ★★★
Heat is an interesting crime thriller in the sense that there are no heroes. It's a portrait of horrible men who refuse to change their lot in life despite how it affects those they are closest with. You can tell that Heat is a labor of love for Michael Mann. Even amongst the chaos, every step is calculated and precise. The crime scenes are thrilling, but the interactions between this all-star cast are even more so. It goes without saying that Al Pacino and Robert De Niro are terrific and the coffee scene in the diner has more layers than just the story itself. Besides these two powerhouses, all the actors lend a lot to their scenes even if they aren't on screen for a long time.
It had been so long since I saw this film that I couldn't remember what happened. I had forgotten that Mann leads you in a direction where you think the main focus is the heists, but like any great story, the real standout is the themes. The cat and mouse game played between Pacino and DeNiro is powerful in the subtext. Although these two men don't know each other, they both don't exist without the other. I'm not sure if Mann is glorifying anybody's role in this movie, which makes it all seem so bleak. But he executes his themes in such a masterful way that you end up rooting mostly for those who aren't all about their egos.
