I randomly started watching Heat the other night and I forgot how awesome this movie is. I feel like it's sort of gotten lost in the shuffle, and I'm pretty sure I'd put it in my Top-1o all-time most underrated movies. For those of you who have never seen it, Heat was made in 1995 and the movie stars Robert De Niro and Al Pacino with De Niro as the leader of a group of robber, and Pacino playing the cop who's trying to catch them. If that's not reason enough to see this movie, I don't know what else is. Come on. It's De Niro and Pacino! Can you imagine them making a crap movie together??
(Okay, I know they did that movie Righteous Kill a couple years ago and it looked like total crap. But other than that, they haven't made a crap movie together! In case you're wondering, the two other movies they've been in together are The Godfather Part II and Heat. So let's all just give them a pass on the Righteous Kill fiasco.)
But Heat is just a great crime thriller from start to finish and the character development is superb. As much as you root for Pacino to catch the bad guy, you also feel for De Niro and his crew and you want to see them somehow win also. And it turns out that the detective and the robber have much more in common than they both think. Also, this movie has two great performances from Ashley Judd and Val Kilmer. In fact, I think it's Val Kilmer's second best movie role ever. His first best role was obviously Iceman in Top Gun. Obviously. Then it's his role in Heat. And then... well... uh... he did Batman that one time. And then, uh... he did uh..... well, he'll always be Iceman in my heart! Never leave your wingman!
We also can't forget about a young Natalie Portman in this movie who plays Pacino's stepdaughter. I think we need to recognize Natalie Portman as probably one of the greatest child actors ever. She was great in Heat, and she had probably the greatest child actor performance ever in The Professional. Anyway, there's tons of other recognizable names/faces in Heat: Jon Voight, Dennis Haysbert aka the president from 24 aka the deep-voiced guy from the Allstate commercials, Tom Sizemore, and Hank Azaria aka the guy who does Moe's voice from The Simpsons. Also! Jeremy Piven has a short on-screen role as a doctor. Now that Piven is an established comedy star, it's funny to go back and see him in movies where he had serious roles. This also works for actors like Vince Vaughn and, to a slightly lesser extent, Jack Black. (Read their filmographies. You'll see what I mean.)
Now, does the movie have its problems? Sure. The film is too long. Clocking in at about 2 hours and 50 minutes, Heat would probably have been just as effective with a run time of 20-30 minutes less than that. But what makes up for this shortcoming is the post-bank robbery shootout sequence; probably one of my favorite shootout scenes ever. It's loud, it's fast-paced, and lots of stuff gets shot up. And just as important, it looks like a real shootout. Now, I've never seen a real shootout in person, but I imagine it looks much more like something from Heat than from, let's say... Bad Boys. Don't get me wrong! Both good movies! Just good for very different reasons. Anyway, if you haven't already, go see Heat immediately. It's that good. I promise.
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