HEAT (1995): A CRITICAL APPRECIATION

 
Heat: A Critical Appreciation

So I am back again with a critical appreciation of another Michael Mann film. Heat, released in the year 1995 is one of the greatest films of all time and very well in my opinion the greatest crime film of all time. I have seen The Godfather, I have seen Goodfellas, I have seen Pulp Fiction, and every other major blockbuster Hollywood crime movie ever made. Heat is the best. But that’s just my opinion.

Today I shall write a critical appreciation of this masterpiece of a movie. It follows a cat and mouse chase between a hyper-professional thief Neil McCauley (Robert DeNiro) and a hard-boiled police detective Lt. Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino). That’s it. That’s the whole story. A 2 hour 50 minute anecdote about two polar opposite persons sharing more similarities than one can imagine. Of course, the supporting cast is also strong; Val Kilmer plays Chris Shiherlis, an accomplice of Neil. And of course, this being a Michael Mann film, women have an important role to play in the protagonists’ life. Someone on Letterboxd commented that “Every woman in this movie looks so tired” and I would go a step further to say that generally everyone in this movie looks too tired. They are tired of what they are doing, who they are with, what lies ahead of them and what not. But that’s just what it is. No one ever thought, “Wait. Do I really like this life I have? Do I try changing things for a minute?” Nope. Everyone just goes on trying to stay above the water. And that’s one of the things I really love about cinema. The subtle references and character traits that are hidden in plain sight that makes you wonder about the movie after you’re done watching it.

Let me talk about the aesthetics of Heat. That is the USP of this film. That is also quite the USP of Michael Mann. Mann sells aesthetics, he doesn’t make movies. He single-handedly revolutionalized the 80s disco and retro neon pop culture vibe with his famous TV show Miami Vice. I don’t care what anyone else says. And like most of Mann’s works, Heat has another cast member that is extremely essential to the plot. The city of Los Angeles.

(If Michael Mann, or anyone associated with Heat is reading my blog, please do not sue me for using frames from this movie)

This frame right here is what I am talking about. Let me break it down. It starts with Lt. Hanna in a helicopter flying around the city of LA and it does not get any better than that. It’s a short 60 second scene at most but it is just absolutely beautiful. The cinematography is at its finest. All the kudos to Mr. Dante Spinotti. As Wikipedia describes it - The film's cinematographer Dante Spinotti used a combination of natural and practical lighting to capture grittiness and realism for the film. The film's visual style also captures the vastness of Los Angeles and the isolation of its characters within the urban sprawl. Mann and Spinotti often use wide shots and long takes to create a sense of scale and immersion.^[36]

Now let me talk about the most famous scene of this film.

The Diner scene.

This is the whole movie in a nutshell. The dialogues between Vincent and Neil in this summarizes the entire film. And it takes place right after the helicopter shot. One of my most favourite quotes is:

[Vincent Hanna] You know, we’re sitting here… you and I, like a couple of regular fellows. You do what you do, and I do what I gotta do. And now that we’ve been face to face… if I’m there and I gotta put you away, I won’t like it. But I’ll tell you… if it’s between you and some poor bastard… whose wife you’re gonna turn into a widow… brother, you are going down.

[Neil McCauley] There’s a flip side to that coin. What if you do got me boxed in and I gotta put you down? Because no matter what, you will not get in my way. We’ve been face to face, yeah… but I will not hesitate. Not for a second.

I could rewatch this entire exchange a hundred times over and still find stuff to praise about. Maybe to the reader it might seem ordinary. And maybe to the reader I might sound mental, because come on “you can’t like movies THAT much”. But you can. I do.

I too, like so many others, praise this scene for it’s realism. Of course the gun reload by Val Kilmer has been spoken about in numerous articles but what many people don’t talk about is the echo of bullets. If, God forbid, a real shootout were to happen in the middle of a metropolitian city then this is exactly how it would sound. I know that the reader might feel I am demented trying to praise something so horrible but I am just pointing out the realism of it all.

Of course, who doesn’t like this shot. This is definitely on my bucket list. Looking out the window at night, in my sea-facing expensive apartment in a metropolitian urban sprawl, wearing a suit, thinking about my life as a whole… I don’t really need to describe it anymore.

 

Another thing that I like about this movie is the choice of music. While the musical score in itself may not be very prominent, what is more famous are two of Moby’s songs, one from his famous album “Everything is Wrong”. Moby is one very famous music artist. I first knew him by name when I watched another masterpiece movie called as “The Bourne Identity”. It is the first of a franchise based on the famous CIA spy agent/assassin ‘Jason Bourne’. Moby composed the famous song for the Bourne movies ‘Extreme Ways’. The beauty of Extreme Ways shall be reserved for another time. He also composed the music for Miami Vice, another Michael Mann film that I love. Name of the song is ‘One of these mornings’.

The most prominent songs in Heat are “God Moving Over the Face of the Waters” and "New Dawn Fades". Do listen to them whenever you get the time. It complements the film in ways one would not expect at all. Especially the ending of the film, mixed with God Moving Over the Face of the Waters; just pure bliss.

 

Now that I mentioned it, the ending of Heat is also exemplary. I would not spoil it but I will just say one thing; there is one Bollywood film called as ‘Shakti’ released in 1982 that has the elements of Heat when it comes to the end scene. Of course, I am pretty sure Michael Mann thought of it on his own, but in my ideal world I would like to think that Mr. Mann first saw Ramesh Sippy’s Shakti and then wrote the final scene for Heat.

I think all in all, what works well is that Heat was made in a way when everything just fell into place. Michael Mann was already well-known amongst the film industry, Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro were critically acclaimed stars by then, the year was 1995, cinema was already on a great run with Schindler’s List, Scent of a Woman, American Beauty, Unforgiven, etc. and the world was just a better place back then. And my affiliation to this movie increased even more because it was released in the 90s. I am a 2000s kid and I will always love that decade, but I have always had a liking for the 90s. Somehow, Heat captures that for me perfectly.

 

I would like to say one more thing before I end this article. To many of the people reading this, especially those who are not cinema enthusiasts, it may seem that I am an amateur faking opinions just to make people think that I am intelligent. But that’s not it. To some people these are just moving pictures, but I have lived a lifetime in these frames.