Heat at 30
I have always been fascinated by the first image of Heat (1995), ever since I first saw the film. It is poetic, powerful, otherworldly, and immediately indicates that Michaeal Mann was not just making any other film but a complete artwork, meticulously planned and executed.
Heat had its Swedish premiere on February 16, 1996, and I watched it a few days later, at Biopalatset in Stockholm. I watched it during the daytime as I was going to a birthday party for my friend Kerstin that same evening. As it is a long film, close to three hours, it was shown three times a day, 12:30, 17:15 and 21:15, at the particular cinema, so it would have to have been at 12:30 I saw it. I am telling you this because the fact that I remember all of this proves its immense impact on me, from its first image to its last.1
Speaking of first and last images, the station in which the train arrives, and Neil McCauley, Robert De Niro’s character, gets of, appearing as if from nowhere in the dark, is Redondo Beach on Los Angeles Metro Green Line. The station appears again at the end of Mann's later film Collateral (2004), where the character arriving and departing is Vincent, played by Tom Cruise. The travel trajectory is reversed though. In Heat, McCauley arrives at Redondo Beach and in the end departs from this world, also in the dark, at Los Angeles Airport (LAX), whereas in Collateral, Vincent arrives in the beginning at LAX and departs this world from Redondo Beach in the end. I find these deliberate connections almost eerie, and otherworldly too.2
It is a fascinating combination, on the one hand Mann’s well-established desire for accuracy and authenticity, of having been to the places and talked to the people that he will make his films about, and on the other hand his sometimes abstract, esoteric, and dreamlike style. It is there already in his first film that was released theatrically, Thief (1981), and also in the series Miami Vice (1984-1989). He may not have directed any episode himself, he was primarily executive producer, but his presence is felt just the same; the look, the language, the mood, the music.3
Adding to the otherworldliness in Mann’s work is the presence of animals, real or metaphorical. In Heat, Justine Hanna (Diane Venora) says to her husband Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) "You sift through the detritus, you read the terrain, you search for signs of passing, for the scent of your prey, and then you hunt them down." talking as if he was a hunter in the wild. It is one of many examples of links, implied or explicit, between humans and animals in Mann's films. There is a visual link between Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis) in The Last of the Mohicans (1992) and Hanna in Heat. In the beginning of that film, Hawkeye is running through the forest, hunting a deer or elk, and eventually he shoots it with a rifle. Just after the shot is fired there is a close-up of his face, and in slow motion he lowers the weapon. In the end of Heat, there is the same shot, this time of Hanna's face after he has just shot his prey, McCauley.4
Like Kurosawa had done with Ran (1985), as my previous article mentioned,5 Mann had worked on the preparations for Heat for a long time, writing a first draft already in the late 1970s, and had made a trial run with the release of L.A. Takedown (1989), as an NBC TV-movie. It seems Mann got the original idea of a contest between a cop and a master thief called Neil McCauley from Mann’s working partner Chuck Adamson. Adamson had been a police detective in Chicago in the 1960s, and for a while had been chasing a thief/bank robber whose name was Neil McCauley, and who was eventually killed by Adamson. The two men even had coffee together once, as in Heat. Adamson and Mann worked together in the 1980s, on the series Miami Vice and Crime Story (1986-1988), and that is when Mann learnt about this history. Adamson is also credited as technical advisor on Heat.6
Heat had a lot of advisors, and they all bring something to it, helping to make it special. But it is the mood, the look, the music, and the developing emotions that are the reasons I cannot get enough of it, and why it is the only American film from the 1990s that is a candidate for my all-time top ten best film list.7 Every scene is electrifying, some thrill me, some move me, and it is all condensed in the sequence towards the end when Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer) comes to pick up his wife Charlene (Ashley Judd). It is by far the clip from Heat I have rewatched the most.
It also helps that I was working as a projectionist at that cinema at the time and remember way too much about the lengths of films and the hours they were screened, not least since I sometimes was the one who set the screening times for the week ahead.
I imagine Mann got inspiration for the ending of Heat, the airport man hunt/shoot out, from Bullitt (1968).
The ending of “Out Where the Buses Don’t Run,” the fourth episode of the second season, is one of the purest examples of this, even though directed by Joe Johnston. It even has one of Mann’s regular actors, Bruce McGill, as a prominent guest star.
Two other highlights are the coyote scene in Collateral and the tiger scene in Manhunter (1986).
This is the third article in this series. First there was Jaws at 50, then Ran at 40.
Adamson also played small parts in some famous films, among them Beverly Hills Cop (1984), A River Runs Through It (1992), and Quiz Show (1994). I have seen L.A. Takedown but I did not like it, which would make it the only thing Mann has directed of which I can say that.
The playfulness of Pacino’s performance is also part of its greatness. He is occasionally having some fun by deliberately exaggerating his often theatrical performance style. “Ferocious, aren’t I.” he says and laughs after an outburst in one great scene, almost as if he is breaking the fourth wall.