” I do what I do best; I take scores. You do what you do best; try to stop guys like me.”
Heat is a dissection of opposite sides of the same coin. The film has two protagonists, Deniro’s McCauley and Pacino’s Hanna. Both are accomplished men in their respective worlds, law enforcement and crime, on the downsides of their careers struggling with what life may be like without their work. Director Michael Mann has described the film’s life dilemma as “Time is short and it has to be invested.” For Hanna, this means the time to close a case and catch a criminal. For Neil, it means evading police. Both neglect meaningful interaction with others in order to maximize their time spent on the job. Lt. Hanna is a grisled, veteran cop, divorced twice with his current marriage on the rocks. He attempts to split himself with both his wife and his job but as the old saying goes, one cannot serve two masters. At his core, Hanna is devoted to one thing, his work. His numerous attempts at cohabitation show a man that would like to change who he is but also displays an inability to do so. Neil McCauley is also displayed as struggling between what he would like to become and who he is at his core. Neil has shunned any lasting connections with anyone, living alone, devoted to a life of crime unimpeded by any emotion that can slow him enough for authorities to catch him. This has made him a successful bank robber but as he heads out of the game, he starts to wonder more and more if this philosophy is one worth adhering to.
A character stuck on the line between civilian life and the street is Donald Breedan (Dennis Haysbert). Out on parole, he tries to stay on the straight and narrow but his past precedes him, the grill cook job he thought his parole officer was getting him turns out to be a glorified janitor’s job where his boss takes a quarter of his pay for himself under threat of being sent back to prison. Fed up with this subservient arrangement, Donald has a chance meeting with Neil, joins them on their last heist and is killed, disappointing his girlfriend once last time. Donald had a choice to make about the type of life that he would lead and seemingly made the right one. But, many times, despite the choices that we attempt to make, the world around us can overrule them and force us into directions we never desired. One of the places this is most clear is with former convicts like Donald, pigeonholed as irredeemable criminals with pathways out closed off to them and their perilous positions exploited, like what Donald’s boss at the diner did to him.
The second major theme apart from a person deciding what they want from life is one of human connections, our need for them, and whether having them is worth what they could possibly lead to. From Hanna’s point of view, we see his established connection with his family deteriorate as a result of his commitment to his job. His wife cannot connect with him despite her attempts and their struggles as a couple causde both to overlook the turmoil their daughter is in, with tragic consequences. Neil’s journey with human connection takes the opposite trajectory. We begin with his being paranoid at the interest a woman named Edie (Amy Brenneman) shows in him. He sleeps with her but still doesn’t establish any emotional connection with her past lust. After a night out with his heist crew, observing the lives they’ve established with their families as they’re winding down their bank scoring careers, we see Neil begin to contemplate just what’s missing from his own life. Slowly, Neil takes his guard down and eventually establishes a connection with Edie. The connection between Chris and his wife Charlene (Ashley Judd) greatly illustrated the strain a life of crime can have on a marriage, just as Hanna’s life chasing criminals had on his. In addition to the stress of evading death or capture, Chris is a gambling addict. Charlene begs him to change but Chris lashes out at her instead. She attempts to leave but Neil promises her he’ll be out of the game soon. Charlene and their son Dominick end up caught in Chris’ crime web, detained and used by Hanna and company to lure out Chris post-shootout. In one of the more emotional scenes, Charlene warns Chris at the last minute from approaching her and falling into the arms of the cops.
Ultimately, Neil succumbs to the consequences of breaking his 30 second rule. He has a path out of the country and harms way, with Edie by his side, but after getting a call from Nate (Jon Voight) with Waingro’s location, Neil walks right into a trap set by Hanna and seeks out Waingro to settle the score. Hanna catches him and ultimately kills him. While Waingro was the culmination of breaking the 30 second rule, Edie was the crack in the dam. Once Neil established a connection with a person, letting emotions enter into his previously meticulous and cold decision-making, that led to his inability to let his hatred and need for vengeance against Waingro go and the violation of his 30 second rule, just as the heat from Hanna was coming around the corner. Despite his adhering to it at the end of the film it’s too little too late; his decision to abandon it earlier began a chain of events that can’t be undone and come back to haunt him later.
As mentioned in the introductory paragraph, one large piece of what makes Heat a transcendent film is the cast. The movie is perfectly acted from the smallest supporting roles to our two main protagonists. The chess match that goes on between Neil and Hanna throughout the film is riveting. Beginning with the stakeout as Neil’s crew travels to cut the communications system in advance of a job and the two essentially have a thermal vision staredown, and culminating in their final confrontation, we get to see two acting masters at work in a pairing for the ages. The now legendary coffee scene, the first time Pacino and DeNiro ever acted opposite each other in their storied careers. The two meet up to get a feel and better understanding of each other, probing for any weakness or clue into the psyche of the other. The greatness in their performance during this scene isn’t just in their verbal performances, it’s in the body language. The chess match between the two plays out physically just as much as it does in their words. Constant shifts in body position and hand position show Neil and Hanna trying to best position themselves should one need the drop on the other. It’s subtle but the difference between good acting and great acting is subtlety.
Chris and Charlene’s final scene is also a standout, with zero dialogue and all facial acting with one physical movement, Judd and Kilmer manage to say everything that needed to be said and convey the total emotion of the moment with no words. It is made abundantly clear to the audience how deep their love is and that no matter what has transpired, she can’t find it in her to give up on him completely. It’s one of the best conveyances of loss ever put to film for me as she knows they won’t be seeing each other again for a while after, if ever. Kilmer also completely sells the euphoria of making it to his family and then having the rug pulled from underneath him. The non-verbal acting between DeNiro and Brenneman’s final scene together also deserves recognition. The face acting displayed by Brenneman showing a mixture of shock and confusion as DeNiro looks her in the eyes and abandons her in an attempt to get away from the cops is one of the film’s most striking.
The shootout scene is film’s best ever and the amount of detail put into shooting it is clear. Mann is well known at this point for his great shootout scenes (see: Collateral) which started here. The actors were trained to shoot by professionals and it is said that Kilmer’s portrayal of a magazine reload was proficient, it has been cited by the Marine Corps as the proper way to reload quickly and efficiently. Anecdotes like that have only added to the scene’s legend over time.
The final confrontation between Hanna and Neil we see the opposite sides of the coin meet on opposite trajectories of their life travels. Neil dies just as he said he would, without going back to prison, fulfilling what he’d always believed his life to be about despite his last minute attempt at changing. He also died with polar opposite at his side, holding his hand; the only other man who could relate to his life’s dilemma, albeit from the opposite vantage point.
Heat is a mountain of a film, one of the lasting monuments in the history of the medium. It’s combination of groundbreaking action and substantive themes has made it an enduring classic and one worthy of discussion more than two decades after its release. It’s replayability, stellar performances, and cohesive, tight writing have firmly placed it in my personal top ten.
Image: Warner Bros.
