Amazon.com video review:
Having developed his skill as a master of contemporary crime
drama, writer-director Michael Mann displayed every aspect of that
mastery in this intelligent, character-driven thriller from 1995,
which also marked the first onscreen pairing of Robert De Niro and Al
Pacino. The two great actors had played father and son in the separate
time periods of The
Godfather, Part II, but this was the first film in which the
pair appeared together, and although their only scene together is
brief, it's the riveting fulcrum of this high-tech cops-and-robbers
scenario. De Niro plays a master thief with highly skilled partners
(Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore) whose latest heist draws the attention
of Pacino, playing a seasoned Los Angeles detective whose
investigation reveals that cop and criminal lead similar lives. Both
are so devoted to their professions that their personal lives are a
disaster. Pacino's with a wife (Diane Venora) who cheats to avoid the
reality of their desolate marriage; De Niro pays the price for a life
with no outside connections; and Kilmer's wife (Ashley Judd) has all
but given up hope that her husband will quit his criminal
career. These are men obsessed, and as De Niro and Pacino know,
they'll both do whatever's necessary to bring the other down. Mann's
brilliant screenplay explores these personal obsessions and sacrifices
with absorbing insight, and the tension mounts with some of the most
riveting action sequences ever filmed--most notably a daylight siege
that turns downtown Los Angeles into a virtual war zone of automatic
gunfire. At nearly three hours, the film qualifies as a kind of
intimate epic, certain to leave some viewers impatiently waiting for
more action, but it's all part of Mann's compelling
strategy. Heat is a true rarity: a crime thriller with equal
measures of intense excitement and dramatic depth, giving De Niro and
Pacino a prime showcase for their finely matched talents. --Jeff
Shannon
