There is no more-mentioned heist thriller in any creative meeting I’ve attended than Heat. Directed by Michael Mann (some would argue in his prime) and starring Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino, the film centers around a squad of thieves, run by DeNiro’s character “McCauley” and pursued by the Pacino’s detective, “Vincent Hanna.”
HEAT. Pacino. DeNiro. Kilmer.
Unlike many thrillers (such as the previously written about Wages of Fear or Enemy of the State), the setup and overall “plot” of Heat is not as impressive as the sum of its parts. This is refreshing. The general setup of the film is simple: A cop tries to stop a robber. The two men have been proverbial foes for a long time when the movie opens. The audience isn’t provided with a sense of arriving “at the beginning.” This is no origin story. In fact, we are really arriving at the end of both man’s careers.
Formally, we are ignited into the picture with a botched robbery—with three dead guards—that re-ignites Vincent’s passions to nail McCauley. But what sets Heat apart is the nature of the characters themselves. As I briefly mentioned above, both men are in the later years of their career. This instantly sets up an interesting dynamic—the two men are perhaps more similar to one another than not. They both are dealing with issues of wives, ex-wives, girlfriends and kids. The first brilliance of the film is the clear manner in which our leads are depicted as grizzled ying’s to each other’s yang’s. But the second brilliance is the way that they are permitted to intersect towards the end of the movie. They meet in a diner and have a heart to heart conversation that would essentially position them as good friends—if it were not for the crimes in between them.
The ying to each other’s yang.
While not forgetting what’s really going on, with both admitting they would kill the other one if they had to, the fact that this scene was so flawlessly inserted into the script is one reason it must be mentioned so often in filmmaking circles. It’s also fraught with tension. How can they just sit next to each other like that? Is something going to happen that we don’t realize? It’s a truly great scene, bringing together two characters (both of whom have been built independently throughout the first two-thirds of the film) and paying their emotional arcs off together.
The scene is watchable here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNyAgN48FQo
But there’s more…
Having written a handful of Thriller Thursday reviews over the last six months, I’ve come to realize that verisimilitude is one of the most important elements of a good thriller. It’s not enough for a main character to be in danger. The character must be in real danger. There is a large distinction. In some ways the difference would be exemplified by comparing a James Bond film to Bourne. Reality is crucial. One example of reality is the opening heist sequence. In it, a new member of McCauley’s crew gets carried away and kills a guard. Some movies might have left it like that and allowed the obvious retribution against the new member of the crew to occur. But what happens in Heat is much closer to reality. McCauley realizes in this moment that his hand has been forced. He has to kill the other two guards now. He doesn’t want to do it, but he’s a consummate professional—albeit in a highly illegal and dangerous field. And so the murders commence. This is a deeply tragic scene, but also one filled with reality.
The relationship between Jon Voight’s character of Nate and McCauley is also quite instructive. Nate is a fence, and also a trader of technology and information for nefarious means. The way that he conducts himself—and the way he looks in general—fits perfectly into the world of Heat. He is not a “fence” in the manner that other movies might portray him—like someone who works at a pawn shop and has a bad drug habit. Nate looks like someone who could easily be an insurance adjuster or small-town lawyer, with his manicured mustache and middle-class slouch and dress. That, again, is part of the magic. The whole combination makes the audience believe they are watching something real, something that exists in real life (but without this movie, they would not otherwise be able to see).
Michael Mann: Master of the Gunfight
Finally, no mention of a Michael Mann movie would be complete without mention of his set pieces. Mann is an absolute master of the gunfight. For example, take a movie like Miami Vice. While that movie was nothing like Heat in terms of it’s permanence within the thriller canon, it (along with Public Enemies, and others) excelled when it came to the sheer reality of the gunfights and action scenes. All of this began with Heat, to some respect. The set pieces and bank/armored car robberies are patently insane. I don’t need to describe them line-by-line. Just check out this video to watch one in action and understand what I’m talking about:
Check out some of my past Thriller Thursday posts here:
ENEMY OF THE STATE
WAGES OF FEAR
THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR
SICARIO
MARATHON MAN
Or go grab HEAT on Amazon: