Can a criminal fall in love? We have seen many movie gangsters having wives and molls and sweethearts around the corner and much of the romance is secondary in the larger concerns of gang battles, escaping attention of alert cops and sliding down into inevitable decline. But what about a romance, a romance that throbs subtly, silently, poignantly? What if the said crook does not let his love interest know even a shred of a fact about his real life but simply lives the illusion until it is inevitably broken? And what then? Will the criminal still stick to the woman he loves or will he leave her as he spots the heat around the corner?
Michael Mann’s masterly 1995 cops-and-robbers thriller deftly
answers this tricky question- thanks to his nuanced, heartfelt, amazingly
poignant touch of direction, a welcome surprise in a premise that brims with
gritty violence, brutal treachery and betrayal at every corner- and also due to
a large measure by one powerhouse performance at the center of it all. But
before we delve deeper into the film’s superb emotional core, as well as its
elegant, clean-cut, incisive thrust of action and crime, let us first remember
of the single important reason why this film ranks so high on every movie buff’s
list.
In 1974, two budding actors, already making something of a
mark with their incendiary acting talent, were cast in the same film in
different roles and yet in character threads that interwove with each other in
fascinating ways and remains a masterclass of storytelling. The film was the
stunning ‘The Godfather Part 2’, Francis Ford Coppola’s superlative sequel to
his already epic ‘The Godfather’- the actors were a fiery Al Pacino, starring
as a cold-blooded yet convincingly alienated Michael Corleone and a sublime
Robert De Niro as the perfect foil- the younger, charismatic version of Michael’s
famous father- embodied earlier by Marlon Brando.
Twenty one years later, Mann, a director known for sharp
policer TV series in the 80s and a handful of compelling and diverse
directorial outings (‘Thief’ and ‘The Last Of The Mohicans’), cast both of them
together in the same frame as once again the opposite forces- cop and criminal-
tireless enforcer and tricky thief and created instant screen magic by igniting
them both.
Or shall I say, honestly, one of them ignites pretty well
enough, the other simply crackles up like an over-lit fuse and the ultimate
impact is a bit of a downer but more than made up by how the writer-director,
the crew and the rest of the cast lets things explode with immediacy, without
compromising on a throbbing emotional core.
In the broad, glinting daylight of Los Angeles, five robbers,
with fearsome hockey masks, take down a van carrying illegal money, in a
hair-trigger sequence of explosive tension which is precision-engineered in its
chilling suspense and stark urban horror and would any day beat the flashier heist
scenes in the films of Steven Soderbergh. Even with things going at clockwork,
this does not look like a perfect job- as a loose-cannon member of the ragtag
crew bumps off a cop and all hell breaks loose.
The leader- Neil McCauley (De Niro)- is naturally furious,
for here is a strange, charismatic loner of a man who would never really kill
someone, until totally required. Meanwhile, the cops are equally intrigued by
the messy nature of the job itself. ‘Robbery Homicide’s taking it’, announces LAPD
detective Vincent Hanna (Pacino)- an aging fox of an enforcer, hell bent on
solving the case, to the point of ruining his third marriage and the stage is
set for a bigger clash of the two determined souls, each doing what they know
best.
With the tone set, Mann makes the film live up to its name
and lets things boil and simmer with the right amount of fiery sauce and
narrative flesh and blood to craft a true potboiler in every sense. The pace is
amazingly unhurried, the detailing astonishingly meticulous (often letting
major sequences of heists gone wrong and investigations going awry unravel with
both big and small detail captured almost naturally) and the snappy dialogue quite
flawless- Mann has a remarkable talent for blending the rapid-fire, profane
verbal tension with the subtler reflections on life and relationships without
it sounding schmaltzy. And this entire piece of fiery hot, sizzling beauty
oscillates perceptively between its attention on the tumultuous lives of its
two leads- one with a failing marriage, the other with a secretly guarded,
throbbing romance-to the terse, brisk scenes of cat-and-mouse pursuit and
treacherous ambush.
All this is before the big stunner of a scene- the literal
clash of the titans- as one sultry Los Angeles evening, Hanna asks his target
Neil out for coffee. The two actors face off in this wonderfully subdued scene-
where Mann withdraws and lets his master performers to take things in their own
hands. The two offer respect to each other, discuss their own personal problems
and end up insisting that they will do what they are meant to. It is a classic
setup, one for the ages.
The film’s urban, dirty, gritty warfare erupts soon after
that- in ways that remain genuinely suspenseful and exciting but after a point,
the so-far lean and muscular film begins collecting a fair bit of its own flab.
Part of the problem is Mann’s sometimes suicidal ambition- trying to tie up all
the threads within the time available, to the point of slowing down things a
bit. The bigger problem seems to be Pacino, laying it more thickly than ever as
the film progresses. His character Hanna is a genuinely smartass cop but Pacino
is taking things too literally- trying too hard to be smart-mouthed, tough,
vulnerable all at the same time. There are scenes in which he could have absolutely
rocked with a subtler control of his emotions- but Pacino, an actor who once
could absolutely simmer just with his silent, intense glares, frequently hams
it up and the effect is that he does let down the film.
It is nevertheless not significantly bad to wreck the film
for Mann has a natural talent to handle actors as well. Val Kilmer is a treat
as McCauley’s younger protégé Chris Shiherlis, a tightly wound yet diligent
youngster totally dedicated to his job. Tom Sizemore and Jon Voight are
reliably excellent and even the women do their parts justice. Special mention
should go to the sublime and vulnerable Amy Brenneman as Eady, the wide-eyed
young lady who melts Neil’s icy heart and responsible for some of the most
searing emotional moments in the script while Ashley Judd and Diane Venora are
quite impressive as imperfect wives trying to hold their marriages together.
And somewhere there is also a young and fresh-faced Natalie Portman playing
angsty blues the way she does best.
And that brings us to the biggest stick of dynamite in the
film- the one man whose towering, terrific performance lends its real
fireworks. De Niro is downright brilliant as McCauley- a man who is a tough,
terse criminal, sure (just watch the blazing scene in which he grills a
treacherous negotiator over a phone call) but also a man, crucially with a
tender, vulnerable inner self. He is a charismatic loner- as he admits, ‘I am
alone, I am not lonely’ and he is looking for some stability in his fugitive
life and De Niro captures both the ruthless determination as well as the
heartfelt despair in equal measure with fantastic, measured elegance. It is a
bravura performance, pitch-perfect in timing, the kind of performance we can
only get from an actor this seasoned and somewhere in between this gritty
portrayal, we also see the same lovelorn essence that we saw in the great,
great ‘Taxi Driver’ years ago.
There is a standalone scene towards the climax- a scene in
which De Niro’s McCauley is trying to save the little world of romance that he
created from falling apart and we see the actor in familiarly desperate form-
early on, when he first finds Eady in a coffee shop and starts warming up to
her, we can almost recognize the sociopathic Travis Bickle wooing Cybill
Shepherd in a coffee shop those decades ago. Such is De Niro’s prowess that he
makes McCauley’s romance totally believable and genuinely poignant without
every exaggerating it.
The same is the case with Mann as well. ‘Heat’ might be
classified as a crime thriller and (as movie lists go) as a terrific,
enthralling action film (the relentless scenes of urban gunplay and stealth are
still unmatched) but it is ultimately Mann’s measured, sublime and minutely detailed
treatment of the same template that today makes it a classic worth viewing.
Now, if only Pacino knew too how to hold himself a bit……
My Rating- 4 and a half stars out of 5
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