Name - Heat
Released - 1995
Director - Michael Mann
The last CineTV contest that I entered was 44 and I have been wanting to get back into them and this was the perfect one that I could not pass up on, because there is one best heist movie of all time, way ahead of all the others, and that is Heat.
We are stepping back in time though around 28 years. Where did the time go? It is hard to imagine, but this film still manages to hold its own after all this time.
It packs some serious Hollywood heavyweights with De Niro facing off against Pacino. I think it was the first time these two legends had been in a film together. De Niro famous for amongst other films but particularly Goodfellas and Pacino was brilliant in Donnie Brasco, Dog Day Afternoon and lets not forget the Godfather.
Not only that, it stars the Ice Man himself, Val Kilmer who is really cool as ice in the movie. His gambling addiction, problems with his wife and being short of cash despite his successful criminal career was played so well.
The film has multiple fascinating storylines that keep you captivated from the start to the finish. The first one is of course the rivalry between De Niro and Pacino.
This leads up to the brilliant coffee shop scene where the two protagonists face off with each other. There ensues a great dialogue between them before they go their separate ways. Although I think Pacino is brilliant, especially in this role, I was always rooting for De Niro as he was always so cool and calculated. Although now it sounds quite silly, to my immature self, I was impressed.
This storyline comes to a crescendo between them at the very end of the film, but which one will win? I won't spoil it for you in case you have not seen it, but it is a gripping battle of wits throughout the film between them.
A great thing about the film, although it portrays an exciting subject, it still manages to maintain a level of morality that crime doesn't really pay for many of the characters and that there are many life sacrifices if you go down that path, many heartbreakingly tragic. You also see how close-nit the police are, training day style but not corrupt like in that film.
There is then some cat and mouse games between the detectives and the criminals which is quite entertaining to watch which leads upto..
..the really great thing about Heat is that it has the best ever heist scene in movie history. What is so great is the tempo of the heist and the SOUND literally blows you away and gets your adrenaline running.
The moment Val Kilmer starts shooting with his automatic weapon it all kicks off with some amazing scenes in the getaway car and lets not forget about the story of the driver. There are some great moves between the bad guys as they try to get away from the cops, taking out a great many of them. I don't think I have seen such a well filmed realistic bank heist shoot out like this before and anything better since then.
The main detectives are also well played and are iconic in their roles that you don't want anything bad to happen to them. Alas with the amount of firepower unleashed in this battle, fatalities were inevitable.
What I found surprising is that the Police decided to confront them in the first place with so many innocent people around and perhaps this is what made the film feel so realistic but also so crazy with the machine gun fire on downtown streets in LA. I have never been to LA and could not say if this is a normal occurence to expect something like this, but the heist and the preceding shoot out are really memorable.
Overall, this film is the best heist film ever made, you should watch it if you haven't seen it yet.
Thanks for reading.
► Trailer
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Credits:
The title image was created by myself in canva and using the CineTV logo.
I do not own any video copyrights. The trailer is linked to the respective copyright owner's channels.
Used under fair-use section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976.
