IMDb #122 Review: Heat (1995)

Source: Wikipedia

Al Pacino as a depressed workaholic LAPD detective? Robert de Niro as an emotionally detached safecracker saving up to leave his life of crime? And there's a passive-aggressive man-date scene where they sip coffee and snipe at each other? WHERE DO I SIGN UP.

This glorious collaboration begins with an armored truck robbery, which sets in motion all the horrible things to follow.

Meet the crime team as they make off with a motherlode of bearer bonds. A paranoid millionaire wants them back; the thieves don't want blood. They want to settle down with their wives and children. Well, except for one lonely bastard without love or a lover, and the maniac who just wants to steal things and kill people.

Heat has nothing to do with molecular excitation. It refers to the lonely bastard's motto: "Allow nothing in your  life you can't walk out on in thirty seconds flat, if you spot the heat around the corner." In essence, when the going gets tough, drop everything and ditch your buddies.

At the worst possible time, he falls for a bookworm/graphic designer girl. She might just pull him out of the crime world, if he weren't such a greedy vindictive asshole. If he weren't bringing the team back together for one last big job. Even if the heat has cranked up and the law is closing in on them.

Meet the detective. He tracks the team on scant evidence and recovers from embarrassing losses to their superior instincts. For a while.

But while the men play cat and mouse, their significant women and children suffer in isolated ignorance. Spouses squabble. Yes, the movie may be well-made, but the protracted arguments grow unpleasant quite quickly.

Until the bank robbery. Which devolves into the single best shootout I've ever seen in any movie. Mad props to the sound designer who made gunshots echo off streets and skyscrapers. Anyway, this amazing scene puts in in motion the other horrible things to follow. The giant scissors of justice snip the knotted plot threads without mercy or compassion.

It goes to show, real-life high-stakes games of cops-and-robbers only destroy the lives of everybody involved. So when the deuteragonists finally square off, knowing that innocent loved ones suffer no matter who wins, it's not a performance you can just walk away from with no lingering attachments.

170 minutes.