Some films stand towering above the others of their decade as a monument to be approached with awe; after 30 years we can say Heat is one of those films.
The Oscars, hilariously and customarily, did not think it worthy of a single nomination because it would not be influential; the way Il Postino would be. Snarf. The Dark Knight obviously borrows an actor William Fichtner to stage a bank job as its opening sequence, and Christopher Nolan has admitted the interrogation scene between Batman and Joker and the sense of urban combat were indebted to Heat. Key to the success of Heat is its sense of reality. From the deafening sound of “WW2 on the streets” when LA’s finest interrupt the getaway of the best crew in the business, to the care with which writer/director Michael Mann has small charges set off to simulate cars being peppered with bullet holes, to the intricacies of metals research and planning that characterise the work of Robert De Niro’s Neil McAuley.
Mann’s 1989 TV movie LA Takedown has the same basic outline as Heat, for which it acts as perhaps the most outrageously developed proof of concept in history, but what it is missing isn’t just the charisma of A-list Hollywood stars but the blockbuster budget that buys Time and Space. The coffee scene in Heat works, not just because it has the fabled first onscreen dialogue between Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, but because it has Time: for thoughtful silences, shifting facial expressions, dramatic pauses – in a word, nuance. Heat is nearly three hours long, and it uses every second of it to really immerse you in the world of these characters. And Mann paints on the broadest of canvasses, from aerial views of Los Angeles, and emptying hotels, to military grade street gun battles, and deserted lot ambushes.
And yet, Space isn’t simply the ability to fill the screen with vast cityscapes, it is the freedom to tell the story thru tense close-ups that rival those of Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns. Look at the first (sic) stand-off between Pacino and De Niro. Mann shoves the camera into Pacino’s face as he holds his breath hoping that the suddenly tipped-off De Niro does not call off the metals heist. We feel the characters reacting to each other, though they have not yet both become aware of each other. Later the tension of Val Kilmer’s attempted rendezvous with his wife is conveyed thru a closeup of Pacino on a phone waiting for word on whether he’s got his man. But neither Pacino nor De Niro is simply a lone wolf. Mann richly fleshes out two opposing forces, and their connections.
Mann paints a Greek tragedy in a crime thriller: a man who lives by a code is home free, bathed in beatific light as he drives thru a tunnel, and then his face flickers from its contentment, and the light fades, as the urge for revenge surges and undoes him.
Talking Movies 