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Heat (1995)

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Information

Year: 1995
Runtime: 170 min.
Director: Michael Mann
Genres: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Rating *: 8.2
Votes *: 411,175
Checks: 43,384
Favs: 3,333
Dislikes: 232
Favs/checks: 7.7% (1:13)
Favs/dislikes: 14:1

* View IMDb information

Top comments

Flicker
Uh, yeah. Very little of this film worked for me.

The dialogue was horrendous, made several degrees worse by Pacino delivering one of the most bizarre performances I've ever seen from him. It's not forgivable, especially considering the acting he's proven he can do, and that the character he's playing is little more than the well-trodden, workaholic cop with messy home life.

DeNiro was better, although he created a character so completely incapable of chemistry or romance that his relationship with Edie doesn't make a lick of sense throughout the entire film. Honestly, he doesn't even smile at her, they just fire off questions as if they're in some two-way interrogation–no back and forth–and after they've extracted enough information from each other they decide to start making out. What?

Other than the fact that I didn't find either of the main characters worthy of empathy, which is sort of huge, the film tried to go way too big. There are too many supporting characters and side stories, most of which are unnecessary and jarringly spliced in, and because of it few of the scenes flow at all. It would have been okay if the plot was competent enough to keep track of everything it introduces, but the pacing completely misappropriates its time. The result: the few great stories with some promise, which only needed patience to be masterfully developed, were severely truncated. As another commenter previously mentioned, what the hell happened to Val Kilmer? I guess that one scene was supposed to imply him leaving forever, despite the entire movie insisting that his wife meant everything to him?

Apart from a tiny handful of great scenes and shots that were well composed, Heat doesn't earn that much redemption. The score had the tendency to be both out of place and in your face, all the characters seemed to live in confusingly similar houses, and the movie had two obnoxious cases of "just forcibly embrace the rightfully emotional women until they do what you want."

Ultimately, I don't know how a film could drag so severely and still have such attention deficit, but this poorly executed mess manages to pull it off. Worth watching if you don't like DeNiro having emotions, enjoy Pacino speaking as though he's always on cocaine, and get off on watching male characters assert their dominance by randomly breaking shit in bursts of spontaneous and unprovoked anger. 7 years 3 months ago
tom waits for alice
Saw this again this weekend, for the first time since it originally played in the theaters over here. It has stood the test of time very well, I think. I myself have not, and had to split it over two nights. 7 years 6 months ago
herk mondo
I saw this, and i really don't get the hype, This is a so so heist movie. For me it wasn't the great actors movie movie everyone is making it out to be. 2 years 6 months ago

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In 20 official lists

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