_Heat_

			reviewed by Cynthia Fuchs



	Even aside from director Michael Mann's famous sense of color and
style, _Heat_ boasts a casting coup made in romance-heaven, Al Pacino as
Vince, an obsessive cop and Robert De Niro as Neil, an obsessive robber.
Of course, the relationship is staged as intense conflict and competition,
so their opposition seems arranged along a kind of (trendy) Austenian
"sense and sensibility'' scale, one guy is cool, the other hot, etc. But
Mann has always been interested in the ways that villains and heroes
infect each other, get inside each others' skins (see _Manhunter_). This
is a movie about chemistry, straight up. 

     Pacino and De Niro are looking expectedly craggy (the latter actually
a bit less ravaged than the former). But when they meet in the film's
obvious set-piece - in a coffee shop, where they lay out the terms of
their relationship, the raging macho lengths they'll go to in order to do
what they "gotta do'' - what's usually a standard conversation format,
shot/reverse-shot, takes on a subtle and yet striking beauty. The camera
lingers on their faces, one at a time, emphasizing their mirroring of each
other, wily eyes, jutting jaws, barely spoken dares: these guys are works
of art. 

     Unfortunately, this is Pacino's most restrained scene in the film.
Looking back, it seems unfortunate that he won a prize for that movie
where he danced with Gabrielle Anwar and enlightened Chris O'Donnell,
because now he seems inclined to hysterical inflection, the "hoo-ha''
effect. Even given that he's obsessive, Vince gets to be too much, a
compilation of overstated effects, big moments marked by a rising volume.
As his third wife (Diane Venora) tells him, he's only interested in his
"prey,'' and "the rest is the mess you leave as you pass through.'' After
a couple of hours of this, you start to feel like part of that "rest,''
rather worn down. 

     By comparison, Neil is a study in austerity. His apartment has no
furniture, he spends his time alone, working out the details of his next
job, storing his money in foreign bank accounts and his rage in his gut.
De Niro is a cagey actor, and he knows how to work the edges of this kind
of role, hinting at complexity but not giving too much away. When a
bookstore clerk (Amy Brenneman) tries to pick him up in a restaurant, he
shifts from startled to menacing to embarrassed to seductive within the
space of a minute. It's creepy, his elusiveness, and it makes her
apparently instant affection for him seem a little crazy. But then you
realize that it's Neil's threat that makes him appealing to Vince, and
she's just hetero-filler. 

     According to the generic imperative, Vince and Neil can't make peace
or give in to one another. But they're also so invested in each other that
they can't connect emotionally with anyone else. (This is too bad, because
the supporting players here are excellent, even in the short screen time
they each have, including Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore as Neil's crew,
Will Studi as Vince's second, and Ashley Judd, Venora, and Brenneman, as
the designated love interests.) Because Vince and Neil are characters
you've seen before, you might argue that this is a movie version of _Miami
Vice_, cunningly self-aware of the conventions it's running. On the other
hand, _Heat_ hardly seems so clever. Like most movie romances, this one is
set up from the start, they're destined for a showdown. It takes place on
an airport runway, amid huge shadows, floodlights, and runway warning
markers. It's actually very pretty, but by that time, three hours into the
movie, you're just waiting for the Ritual Bonding Climax. It looks great,
but it's . 


Cynthia Fuchs teaches film and media studies at George Mason University.

Copyright by Cynthia Fuchs.  All rights reserved.
Please do not reprint this review without the permission of the author.

This review originally appeared in the Philadelphia _City Paper_.