HEAT
A film review by Tom McDonald
Copyright 1995 Tom McDonald
HEAT Fizzles Out
It's hard to believe Michael Mann could get two of Hollywood's biggest living legends and a multi-million dollar budget, and make a movie that totally collapses on itself. If you could overlook the worst on-screen kiss since Sylvester Stallone kissed Sharon Stone in THE SPECIALIST, the first portion of the movie lives up to the hype. DeNiro's and Pacino's characters are quickly established as the tough and professional ... and two guys on a definite collision course. An entertaining cat-and-mouse game quickly ensues between DeNiro and Pacino with the first half of the movie culminating in an entertaining, but woefully underwritten scene in which the two starts meet face to face.
Then integrity of the film then falls apart.
The collapse starts with a bank robbery in which DeNiro and two of his cohorts kill the entire LAPD. It's a ridiculous action sequence that has DeNiro carrying a wounded Val Kilmer through a hailstorm of magic bad-guy bullets ... ya know, those magic bullets that never hit the bad guys. Actually those bullets were flying over DeNiro's head and ripping holes in the rest of the script, because from that point on, every character comes down with the syndrome known as "lets not do what any real person with a brain would do in this situation so we can film another stupid contrived action sequence."
A real professional would have shot Kilmer in the head in the shoot-out and kept going. Nowhere in the film is the relationship between DeNiro and Kilmer portrayed as strong enough to warrant such heroic actions by DeNiro.
And there is no way in hell DeNiro goes back to the hotel to kill the really, really, really bad guy. I mean he's already killed the really, really bad guy. He sees that there are cops all over the hotel waiting for him to go after the really, really, really bad guy. Would a smart guy do it. No. Would a professional guy do it? Would a retiring thief with a gazillion dollars and a babe in the car and a jet at the airport do it ... the same guy who was lucky enough to run into the entire LAPD on a day when they all had blanks in their little guns. NO WAY. But Writer (I use that term loosely)/Director Mann would like you to think he would. Suddenly the professional is not professional, and DeNiro's character is totally undermined. Then, after another totally contrived scene in which DeNiro leaves his "deer-in-the-headlights" girlfriend standing at the car, there is another ridiculous scene in which 50 year old Pacino - carrying a ten pound shotgun - chases 50 year old DeNiro about seven miles around an airport. The film finally ... mercifully, ends in what has to be the worst choreographed and most uninventive shoot-out in movie history.
I won't even go into the details about the stupid subplot with an ex-con on parole which is so phony its almost laughable. HEAT starts out with lots of potential then gets really, really dumb. So dumb, that even DeNiro and Pacino cant save it. Hollywood must think we're idiots. Cheers to the guy who wrote this fall's USUAL SUSPECTS. It had half the star power, half the fire power, but it had ten times the script and it was ten times the movie. I can't believe Michael Mann looked at the final cut of this film and said "yeah ... let's go with it." He ought to be ashamed of himself for wasting such potential.
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