Heat

A crime film set in Los Angeles. Neil leads a crew. They open with an armoured car robbery, and during it a new man kills three guards; that was not the plan. Vincent works homicide. He comes to the scene, reads the traces, and understands he is dealing with a professional. From there the film tells the two men in parallel. Both are fixed on their work, both have collapsing private lives, and each admires the other. There is a scene over coffee in the middle. Neil and Vincent sit at a table and talk; it is short, calm, and the first time the two actors share a frame. The last job is a bank. A gunfight starts on the way out and runs down a street in the centre of the city. The sound of that gunfight is the film's signature. The weapons were recorded in real locations and the echo was deliberately kept; the sequence was later used as a teaching example in military and police training. What the narrative is interested in is not crime but the inability to attach: Neil's one rule is to live a life he can walk out of in thirty seconds, and the film tests that rule. The women are inside the narrative. Wives, girlfriends and a stepdaughter; most of the film's emotional losses are there. The director had shot the same story years earlier as a television film; this is the expanded version of that text. Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, Jon Voight, Ashley Judd and Natalie Portman are in the cast. Michael Mann directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes long, serious, well-constructed crime films. Who it is not for: anyone looking for pace; it runs close to three hours and most of it is preparation.