Heat, though in the action genre, completely violates that genre. Oh and if you are wondering, that is a good thing. Heat is not your typical action film. It could be said that Heat is story, with some action sequences. Michael Mann always makes his films with something deeper. It is true that he only makes films within the action or thriller genre, but he takes them to new heights, and they are brilliant to watch. Heat is no exception.
Characters are what drive Heat. The wonderful casting of Robert De Niro (playing the brilliant criminal Neil McCauley), and Al Pacino (playing no-nonsense detective Vincent Hanna) is perfect. What is so great about Heat is that it goes inside the lives of each of these men, showing us the personal feelings of Neil and Vincent, and it adds much needed depth amongst all the flying bullets. We simply see their lives. It is as if we are watching two movies, about two different people, who happen to have a connection to the same crime. Neil McCauley is a thief... an expert thief... one of the best. His philosophy in life - become attached to nothing in life that you can't walk away from if the "Heat" is on. His crew of criminals is a high-tech outfit pulling off professional jobs that impress even the likes of Detective Vincent Hanna. But Hanna, a man driven through life only by his work, becomes obsessed, at the expense of his private life, with bringing McCauley down. As McCauley's crew prepare for the score of a lifetime, and Hanna's team tries to bring him in, the two find that they are challenged by the greatest minds on the opposite side of the law that either one has ever encountered. But the movie does not just follow that plot in a straight line. We takes off on tangents that develop the characters, and that is what elevates Heat to greatness.
Michael Mann's direction absolutely brilliant. As we saw in his latest film Collateral, Mann has a way of adding character to a location, just like he did with the night of Los Angeles in Collateral; Mann finds character in all the many locations of Heat. For instance take a scene near the end of the film when Neil and Vincent meet outside of an Airport runway. During this confrontation planes fly overhead, and lights go on and off. He makes a character out of the runway, and it adds many dimensions to the scene, making not just a shallow action film, but something deeper and more true. One attribute that of Mann's is that he knows how to use his actors, and with two veterans like Pacino and De Niro that is a great thing. They more than do their jobs, and are always brilliant to watch. Also Mann loves to deal with casuality, having one action lead to another. Nothing in his films go without consequence, positive or negative, and Heat is a prime example of that.
Overall Mann's Heat is one of the best action movies ever made. With wonderful and real performances, and brilliant direction and writing by Mann, and it merits more than one watch. Heat will always be one of my favorite films. It was positively brilliant.
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