L.A. Takedown

It says something about the kind of juice Michael Mann had within the industry in 1989 that he was able to create – and get on television – a rough draft for a film he would make six years later. He wrote an early draft of what would become Heat in 1979 that was 180 pages and based on real people he knew both personally and by reputation in Chicago. Ten years later, he cut the screenplay down to 110 pages and raised the financing himself so that he owned the rights to the material. The result was a made-for-television movie entitled L.A. Takedown, a cat-and-mouse story between a career criminal and a dedicated police detective that aired on NBC on August 27, 1989 at 9 p.m.
 
The origins for the project were based in large part from the experiences of a police officer and an old friend of Mann's, Chuck Adamson, who had been chasing down a high-line thief named Neil McCauley in Chicago in 1963. Mann wrote another draft after making Thief (1981) with no intention of directing it himself. In the late 1980s, he tried to produce the film several times and offered it to his friend and fellow filmmaker Walter Hill but he turned it down. Mann was still not satisfied with the script, which had developed the character of McCauley but who still needed work. It also lacked an ending.
 
Early on, L.A. Takedown follows the plot to Heat beat-for-beat with Scott Plank playing Los Angeles Robbery-Homicide division cop Vincent Hanna and Alex McArthur as Patrick McLaren (Neil McCauley in Heat), the veteran thief. It is fascinating to see the different choices that Mann makes, such as the tweaks in dialogue or in the casting of certain characters. For example, Xander Berkley, a fantastic actor in his own right, is cast as Waingro, the loose cannon McLaren hires to help his crew knock over an armored truck. The actor plays him initially as a jittery psychopath, only to later settle on a drugged-out look, whereas in Heat, Kevin Gage brings a scary, simmering intensity to the role – a stone-cold serial killer and agent of chaos.

The most interesting casting in the movie is Hanna’s team, which includes Richard Chaves (Predator), Michael Rooker (Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer), and Daniel Baldwin (John Carpenter’s Vampires). Unfortunately, they hardly get any screen time and therefore make little impact. Plank is okay as Hanna but lacks the confident swagger that Al Pacino brought to the role. That being said, he does have a nice moment with his estranged wife, Lillian (Ely Pouget), near the end, after McLaren is killed, where he admits that he loves her but isn’t going to change.
 
L.A. Takedown suffers most in the casting of McLaren and his crew. McArthur, eerily chilling in William Friedkin’s Rampage (1987) as a sadistic serial killer, lacks the gravitas of Robert De Niro. The same can be said for the barely seen Peter Dobson (The Frighteners) as Chris Sheherlis who comes off as a glorified extra in this incarnation, whereas the role was expanded significantly in Heat with Val Kilmer taking over the character. Vincent Guastaferro (NYPD Blue) plays Michael Cerrito and lacks the intensity that Tom Sizemore brought to the part. They are simply not convincing as a team of elite thieves but then, they aren’t given the screen-time.
 
The scene where Hanna and McLaren meet face-to-face is fine but it makes one realize just how much De Niro and Pacino brought to the table – nuance and subtlety –that is lacking from McArthur and Plank. There is stiffness to the line readings from both actors as they fail to bring Mann’s words to life, summing up what’s going on in this movie. The inflexible actors are cast in the lead roles and the actors you’d like to see cut loose, like Rooker, are wasted in nothing roles. The famous bank robbery shoot-out is still exciting to watch and one of the few times L.A. Takedown comes thrillingly to life. It lacks the visceral immediacy of Heat but does have some cool shots, such a McLaren and Sheherlis running back into the bank after Hanna and his team show-up, with them chasing the camera in a slick tracking shot.

There are some enjoyable bits of business, such as a montage of Hanna working the streets of L.A., asking around about McLaren and his crew. Mann gives us a brief slice of the city’s night life via quick, broad strokes. Perhaps what is most striking about L.A. Takedown is how it doesn’t feel or look like a Mann production. While Ron Garcia’s (Twin Peaks) cinematography is just fine, it lacks the widescreen mastery of Dante Spinotti’s work in Heat. The T.V. movie’s 1.33:1 aspect ratio certainly doesn’t do it any favors, giving it a boxed-in feel as opposed to Heat’s 2.39:1 aspect ratio, which opens everything up and gives the film more of an epic feel. The lack of Mann’s distinctive touch may also be due to the incredibly fast shoot – uncharacteristic for the methodical filmmaker – with only ten days of pre-production and 19 days of shooting. In comparison, Heat had a six-month pre-production period and a 107-day shooting schedule.
 
At the end of the day, L.A. Takedown is a fascinating curio, nothing more – a stripped down, rough draft. Gone is Shiherlis’ subplot, so is the bungled precious metals sting, the subplot involving Hanna's stepdaughter, and McLaren dies differently and less satisfyingly. Due to the short running time, everything feels condensed while Heat’s expanded running time allows the story to breathe and provide nuanced characterization, thereby shedding more light on the motivations for the characters’ actions. Heat shows how more time, millions of dollars and a talented, star-studded cast can make a difference. Afterwards, Mann had a much clearer idea of how he wanted Heat to be structured. More importantly, he also figured out the ending. In 1994, Mann showed producer Art Linson another draft of Heat over lunch and told him that he was thinking of updating it. The producer read it, loved it, and agreed to make the film, giving ‘90s cinema what would prove to be a timeless heist classic.

The Jericho Mile

After cutting his teeth on documentaries in the early 1970s, Michael Mann moved to Hollywood and planned “to make it big in ninety days,” but found that “for two years I couldn’t get arrested.” In the process of learning how to write screenplays over two years, he came to the attention of the Robert Lewin, who had been a screenwriter for popular television shows like Rawhide and Mission: Impossible and was now the story editor on Starsky and Hutch. Lewin taught him about story structure and had Mann working as an assistant story editor. He would end up writing the first four episodes of the show and it became a huge success.

His run on Starsky and Hutch led to a stint on the T.V. show, Police Story, which was run by playwright Liam O'Brien and included famous crime writer, Joseph Wambaugh (who wrote The Onion Field) as a contributor. Each episode was based on a real event, working with the policeman whose story it was based on. Mann "learned a lot about writing and about working with real guys." Working on Police Story continued Mann's fascination with journalism and performing detailed research on a given project.

Mann's writing received strong critical notices and was a great learning experience. The success from writing led to him directing an episode of Police Woman and an opportunity to develop his own weekly T.V. series, Vegas (1978). However, the network wanted to water down the series and Mann clashed with director Richard Lang over the direction that the show was to take so he left after writing the pilot.

Mann’s T.V. work brought him to the attention of producer Tim Zinnemann and actor Dustin Hoffman who hired him to adapt ex-convict Edward Bunker’s novel, No Beast So Fierce. Mann spent three months conducting first-hand research at Folsom State Penitentiary in California. His work would go uncredited and eventually be made into the gritty crime film, Straight Time (1978).

Mann's success in television gave him the confidence to ask ABC for a shot at directing a film. He set up a made-for-T.V. movie called Swan Song about a skier but the project was delayed when its star, David Soul, needed a year to recover from a spinal injury. The head of ABC television’s Movie of the Week sent Mann a prison-themed teleplay written by Patrick J. Nolan. Mann extensively rewrote it, incorporating his research from Folsom and the result was a made-for-TV movie called The Jericho Mile (1979).

The film opens with a montage of prison life in almost documentary fashion to an instrumental version of the Rolling Stones song “Sympathy for the Devil.” Mann really gives a flavor of the different kinds of prisoners and the gangs they belong to via a sports writer who interviews someone (Roger E. Mosley) from the Black Brotherhood and a Latino gang member who brags about his handball skills all the while Dr. D (Brian Dennehy), the leader of a white supremacist gang, deals drugs. Mann shows how these various gangs interact with each other with the fascination of an anthropologist. He immediately captures the sights and sounds of life on the yard and then takes us inside to show what life is like among the cellblocks.

The film’s protagonist is an inmate by the name of Larry “Rain” Murphy (Peter Strauss) who is serving a life term in Folsom for shooting and killing his father for raping his stepsister. He spends his yard time running laps. He lives a Spartan existence with no creature comforts – just plain white walls, which anticipates the protagonist in Mann’s later film, Blackhat (2015). Much like that character, Murphy even works out in his cell. His entire focus is on running.

In contrast, R.C. Stiles (Richard Lawson), the African-American man in the cell next to Murphy, has his walls covered with photographs of loved ones and receives in the mail one of his newborn baby girl. He’s gregarious and chatty while Murphy internalizes and says little. The next day, Murphy is out on the yard again, only this time the prison officials take an interest and discover that he is running close to a four-minute mile.

Like many Mann protagonists, Murphy has a single-minded obsession that drives him, which is running. Like Neil McCauley in Heat (1995), Murphy keeps to himself, developing no attachments to anyone and he adheres to same mentality that ex-con Frank espouses in Thief (1981), but runs into trouble when, against his better judgment, befriends Stiles and is dragged into the man’s problem.

Mann shows how deals are made among the inmates through favors. In order to speed up his next conjugal visit with his wife, Stiles makes a deal with Dr. D, which upsets the Black Brotherhood who feel that Stiles is betraying his race. This understandably creates tension between Murphy and Stiles, causing the former to lose a bit of his focus.

Meanwhile, the prison warden (Billy Green Bush) brings in a state track and field coach (Ed Lauter) from a Sacramento college who has Murphy run against three of his best athletes. Incredibly, Murphy beats them all, impressing the coach. The powers that be want him to run in the upcoming Olympic trials, but he turns them down. For him, it would be a cruel taste of the outside world and he knows that the rest of his life will be spent in prison. Of course, Dr. D’s favor has strings attached and once Stiles realizes what they are he becomes outraged. One gets the uneasy feeling that things are not going to end well for him.

Peter Strauss not only looks the part – he’s in phenomenal shape with the lean, muscular build of a runner – but also embodies it by portraying a self-made man who survives prison life through his running. It defines who he is while providing him with a day-to-day structure. He delivers an intense performance, picking his moments to explode with anger and then dialing it back to a simmer, like the fantastic monologue he delivers when Murphy explains to the prison doctor (Geoffrey Lewis) why he’s serving a life sentence. Strauss delivers his dialogue with heartfelt emotion and it’s hard not to get caught up in his character’s dream of becoming one of the best runners. The actor demonstrates an incredible commitment to the role, setting the standard for every subsequent lead actor in future Mann films.

The always-watchable Brian Dennehy is good as the smooth-talking Dr. D whose gang holds slight control over the prison population. He has a smiling façade but behind it is a lot of menace, especially when someone crosses him and threatens his drug trade. Richard Lawson is also good as the contrast to Strauss’ inmate. He instills an infectious streak of hope in Stiles who looks forward to being reunited with his family but this also gives him a lot to lose. He ultimately plays a tragic character, but one that has a profound effect on Murphy.

There are some truly powerful moments in The Jericho Mile, like when Murphy sends a message to Dr. D by burning the man’s drug money in the prison yard in front of everyone, but the most emotionally moving one is Murphy’s climactic run at the end of the film. The style of The Jericho Mile is quite crude compared to Mann’s future films as he adopts a more naturalistic look from his documentary work and it fits the subject matter. Like other Mann films, this one has an ear for distinctive lingo as it features authentic prison-speak. It’s not just what these men say but how they say it that makes it so believable. It didn’t hurt that Mann was allowed to shoot scenes in Folsom and even used real inmates as extras, which only lends to the film’s authenticity.

By the end of The Jericho Mile, Murphy stays true to himself even if it means he is unable to run in the big race. He chooses to live life on his own terms, refusing to compromise to the powers that be. At the end, Murphy may be in prison but to him as long as he is able to run he is free because he has nothing to prove to anyone but himself. This is symbolized by Murphy throwing away a stopwatch that he uses during training. It smashes on the ground. He doesn’t need to be constrained by record times or qualifying times – the only thing he has to beat is his own expectations.

Mann shot The Jericho Mile for only $60,000 and was told by the prison warden that there had been several individual stabbings – something that happened routinely and if a gang or race war were to occur, the film crew would have to leave. They wouldn’t be able to finish the film. Mann found a solution by casting 28 convicts in major roles and with Eddie Bunker’s help negotiated with all the prison gangs to have eight or nine of each group be in the film in exchange for no gang or race wars while they were there filming. He used film stock so that it was able to get a theatrical release in Europe. He won an Emmy for writing and a special Director’s Guild of America Award. After the film’s debut on ABC television, Mann received many offers to direct all kinds of feature films but turned them all down. He went to United Artists to ask for an $8 million budget and the freedom to direct a screenplay that he wrote, entitled, Violent Streets, which went onto become Thief.

SOURCES

Appelo, Tim. “Legendary Newsman Mike Wallace ‘Detested’ The Insider, Michael Mann Reveals.” The Hollywood Insider. September 22, 2014.

Feeney, F.X. and Paul Duncan. Michael Mann. Taschen. 2006.

Steensland, Mark. Michael Mann: The Pocket Essential Guide. Matrix Digital Publishing. 2009.

Blackhat

Michael Mann’s interest in computer hackers and the socio-political impact of their illegal activities can be traced as far back as 1995 when he was briefly linked to an adaptation of William Gibson’s cyberpunk novel Count Zero, a science fiction tale involving international espionage via cyberspace. Two decades and several films later, Mann has returned to this subject matter with Blackhat (2015), a thriller about a group of American and Chinese government agents tracking a cyber-criminal determined to disable the international banking network.

The filmmaker certainly has his work cut out for him as historically movies about computer hacking are notoriously inaccurate (Swordfish) or pure flights of fancy (Hackers) with WarGames (1983) having the distinction of being a more realistic portrayal and a bonafide hit as well. Mann’s perchance for meticulous research and his obsession with attention to detail would ensure that at the very least Blackhat would depict the world of computer hacking as realistic as a fictional film would allow. The challenge would be to convey all the requisite tech jargon in an interesting and understandable way that wouldn’t lose the uninitiated while also appealing to those in the know.

After one of their nuclear power plant’s computer network is infiltrated by an unknown hacker causing the coolant pumps to overheat and explode, the Chinese government sends cyber defense expert Captain Chen Dawai (Leehom Wang), who also enlists the help of his sister (and computer expert) Chen Lien (Tang Wei), to the United States where he compares notes with FBI Agent Carol Barrett (Viola Davis) who dealt with a similar attack. When soy stock is manipulated at the Chicago Mercantile Trade Exchange, Dawai and Barrett figure out that the same Remote Access Tool (RAT) was used as on the power plant.

Dawai reveals that he was the co-architect of the software and that to catch the hacker behind these incidents they need the other person who helped create it – Nick Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth). The trouble is that he’s currently serving a 15-year stint in prison. He cuts a deal with the FBI: he’ll help them catch the hacker in exchange for commuting his prison sentence. And so, the assembled team begins to track down the trail the hacker left behind, both electronically and in the real world.

Chris Hemsworth does a solid job as a hardened career computer hacker and handles his tech-heavy jargon well, selling the material in a believable way. He even has a nice scene with Tang Wei where, over dinner, Hathaway reveals a bit about his checkered past, conveying a convict mentality much like James Caan’s character did in the diner scene from Thief (1981). Some may criticize the casting of Hemsworth as he is too good-looking to play a credible hacker but let’s face it, to get Blackhat made at a studio with the budget it had ($70 million), Mann had to cast a recognizable movie star with some clout. Thanks to his recurring role as Thor in the insanely popular Marvel Studios movies, he has that clout.

The romance that develops between Hathaway and Lien initially feels tacked on and unnecessary, like it was a clumsily written plot device to get us emotionally invested in the characters and is not integrated as well as in films like Miami Vice (2006) or Public Enemies (2009), but as the film progresses it starts to feel more natural. This is perhaps Blackhat’s glaring fault and what separates it from Mann’s truly great films. The film lacks the emotional weight that you see in Heat (1995) or The Insider (1999) where the stakes are so high for the individual characters. There is a lot at stake for Hathaway in Blackhat, but it never resonates as strongly in previous Mann films and this may be due to the weaknesses in the screenplay or Hemsworth’s performances or a combination of both. That being said, it is interesting to note how for the first half of the film Hathaway’s attacks on the bad guys are all done from distance, be it from a computer or a gun. It is only once he becomes personally affected that he must deal with his enemies in an up close and personal fashion.

The screenplay written by Morgan Davis Foehl (and revised by Mann) throws around plenty of computer-speak but does it in a way that allows you to follow what’s going on with very little trouble, which is important in a film that hopscotches all over the world, from Los Angeles to Hong Kong to Malaysia to Indonesia. Unlike pretty much every other fictional film’s depiction of computer hacking, Blackhat gets a lot of the details right, most notably in what comes up on computer screens. Instead of trippy graphics we see screens of computer code that Hathaway and his crew have to sift through and make sense of in order to figure what the bad guys are doing.

Mann is still a master of action as evident in several tense shoot-outs sprinkled throughout the film, including one in a storage yard between Nick and his crew and the bad guys. It is an immersive experience that drops you in the middle of a noisy gun battle with bullets that whiz by and danger lurking around every corner. Blackhat is also beautiful to look at with some truly stunning digital cinematography courtesy of Stuart Dryburgh, from the vast expanse of an airfield that dwarfs Hathaway to the Hong Kong skyline at night. Mann takes us to some exotic locales and immerses us in them in a way that creates an atmospheric experience. Shooting on location creates a real, tangible sense of place that you can’t fake with CGI. It also provides local color and offers a window into a foreign culture.

In lieu of the Sony Corporation hacks in 2014, Blackhat is eerily relevant. The film shows just how vulnerable we all are to having our private, intimate details exposed, from the individual to a high-ranking NSA agent. With the right software and the means, anything can be hacked. Blackhat is part cyber whodunit and part pulse-pounding action thriller. It is too soon to say if this is another masterwork from Mann. Some time, distance and repeated viewings will determine how it ranks in the pantheon of his work. That being said, it is still an impressive effort that demonstrates Mann’s ongoing exploration of his trademark motifs and themes that include protagonists who excel at their respective vocations, brief yet intense romantic relationships, and the role technology plays in their lives. Blackhat also features Mann’s trademark style, but with plenty of substance. It may lack the emotional weight of his previous work and, as a result, may not convert new fans to his particular brand of cinema, but to the faithful the film is pure cinematic catnip.

Michael Mann Blogathon: The Keep

BLOGGER'S NOTE: This post is a part of the Michael Mann Blogathon going on over at the Seeti Maar - Diary of a Movie Lover blog. If you get a chance, check it out as there are all kinds of amazing contributions so far.

Let’s get this out of the way – The Keep (1983) is not a good film. It is, at times, an interesting one that has its inspired moments, but it is a narrative mess with lackluster performances. It is the equivalent of David Lynch’s Dune (1984) – a big budget folly beset by production problems and an uncaring studio that butchered the film before its release. And like Lynch, the experience was so painful for Michael Mann that he has never revisited it since. It’s all George Lucas’ fault. The success of Star Wars (1977) motivated all kinds of directors to dabble in the science fiction, horror and fantasy genres. For example, in the year The Keep was released, Peter Yates directed Krull, John Carpenter and David Cronenberg tackled Stephen King adaptations with Christine and The Dead Zone, respectively, Tony Scott’s directorial debut was the gothic vampire tale The Hunger, and there was also Something Wicked This Way Comes. These films, however, were overshadowed by the third installment of the Star Wars trilogy, Return of the Jedi, which dominated the box office.


After Thief (1981), Mann was offered all kinds of urban crime films. He was not interested in repeating himself and wanted, instead, to do something like Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude that would allow him to make a film that was “non-realistic and create the reality.” He worked briefly on the screenplay for Jim McBride’s Breathless (1983) but left that project to make The Keep, an adaptation of F. Paul Wilson’s novel about a mysterious force within a Nazi fortress. The film begins with a transition from a black screen to blue sky and then pans down to the action. Mann would do the exact same thing at the beginning of Manhunter (1986) three years later. As is typical with the beginning of a Mann film, the opening sequence is devoid of dialogue. A convoy of trucks filled with Nazi soldiers drive through desolate countryside. They arrive at a small village in the Dinu Pass in the Carpathian Alps in Romania circa 1941. The town’s inhabitants look at these intruders suspiciously. Out of the fog, the convoy arrives at the Keep, which is to be their new base of operations. The commanding officer, Woermann (Jurgen Prochnow) proudly proclaims to a subordinate, “Now we are the masters of the world. Doesn’t that enthrall you?” The irony of this statement is that it is said before the Nazis invaded Russia and failed.

The Keep is a massive, imposing structure. Mann used vintage arc lamps from the 1920s and 1930s to get “a certain kind of hard blue shaft of light coming through all the openings in the keep.” The village outside of the Keep was shot with very bright light and in white in order to represent innocence. However, something is not quite right and this is symbolized by the fact that none of the rooftops are symmetrical. In contrast, everything inside the Keep is dark. Mann said, “We exposed for the highlight and let all the shadows go. Instead of a flood or a wash of light, there are very defined shafts of light. It’s only in those shafts that we can see things.”

Father Fanescu (Robert Prosky) is the caretaker of the Keep and warns Woermann that he and his men should not stay inside the structure because bad dreams drive out people who attempt to stay too long. Naturally, Woermann scoffs at such notions. He is an overconfident antagonist like Leo in Thief, Waingro in Heat (1995) and Thomas Sanderford in The Insider (1999). Fanescu also warns them never to touch the many metal crosses embedded in the walls. Of course, two greedy soldiers on night watch try to pry one out, believing that it hides some kind of treasure. In doing so, they uncover the vast interior of the Keep and a powerful force that kills them. They have unknowingly awakened a being known as Molasar (Michael Carter). This even awakens a man by the name of Glaeken (Scott Glenn) who lives in Greece. He quickly packs his things and goes to Romania. This man is a loner, much like other Mann protagonists. He is a man of few words, driven by intensely personal reasons to do what he does.

Reinforcements arrive led by a vicious officer, Major Kaempffer (Gabriel Byrne) who starts killing villagers in retaliation for the mysterious deaths of five soldiers. He finds inscriptions on a wall in a language that none of them can decipher but Fanescu knows of a scholar who can – Dr. Cuza (Ian McKellen). He and his daughter Eva (Alberta Watson) are summoned from a concentration camp. When two soldiers try to rape Eva, they are eradicated by Molasar and enveloped by smoke. In comparison to the cold, calculated Kaempffer, Woermann seems much more reasonable. He is smart enough to fear this unknown force and has enough compassion to send Eva to the local inn. Kaempffer is weak of mind, like Freddie Lounds in Manhunter and Van Zandt in Heat. Kaempffer thinks too rationally and deludes himself into believing that he is in control.

For Molasar, the more it kills the more of a physical presence it has. It makes a deal with Dr. Cuza that if he carries out the talisman that keeps it imprisoned in the Keep, Molasar will kill all of the soldiers. However, Glaeken knows that if Molasar is released, it will destroy the world. Glaeken is not just a traveler, as he describes himself, but also watches over the Keep and makes sure that Molasar does not get out.

As the film builds towards its climax, Woermann confronts Kaempffer and tries to appeal to his conscience one more time:

“All that we are is coming out, here in this Keep. And what truth do you see, what are you discovering about yourself, Kaempffer? I murder all these people. Therefore I must be powerful. Smash them down because only that raises you up. It’s a psychotic fantasy to escape the weakness and disease you sense in the core of your soul ... You have released the foulest that dwells in all men’s minds. You have infected millions with your twisted fantasies. And formed millions of diseased mentalities that worship your twisted cross.”

This is not only an indictment of the Nazi philosophy but also the godlike mentality alluded to by Hannibal Lecktor to Will Graham in Manhunter. Dr. Cuza has become corrupted by power like those he hates – the Nazis. When Molasar heals him of his diseased state, he loses sight of what is good and evil.

Producers Gene Kirkwood and Howard W. Koch, Jr. optioned F. Paul Wilson’s book for Paramount. Not surprisingly, Mann was not interested in a straightforward adaptation. He did not want to make a traditional horror film. As he said in an interview at the time, “What it is overall is very dreamy, very magical, and intensely emotional.” Mann admired fairy tales and was drawn to Wilson’s best-selling novel as a way to make a fairy tale movie for adults.

The filmmaker did not use Wilson’s book as his starting point, but it was actually a meeting with Otto Skorzeny in 1969. Skorzeny was a former member of the S.S. and one of World War II’s most successful commandos. He led the raid that rescued Benito Mussolini from Italy in 1943. At Nuremberg, Skorzeny successfully defended himself and was acquitted. After the war, he ran a mercenary operation out of Spain. Mann was fascinated by Skorzeny’s psychology. Mann said in an interview that “the overt politics interest me less than the states of mind: the specific kinds of aberration that explain why a lower middle-class bourgeois in Munich would be attracted to the Waffen SS in 1933.”

Mann also read The Walter Langdon Report, a document commissioned by the Office of Strategic Services to psychoanalyze Adolph Hitler. Walter Langdon was a New York doctor who had talked to many people that knew the dictator before the war. This portrait of Hitler and how he reflected the psychosis of whole nation fascinated Mann. Another primary influence on the film was Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment, which posits the theory that fairy tales were complex morality fables. Bettelheim argues that myths have clearly defined heroes and usually end in tragedy, while fairy tales were universal with happy endings. It goes on to propose the theory that most enduring children’s stories do not teach moral messages as fables do but deal with action and horror in a way that allows children to deal with real world horror over time.

Mann first scouted locations in Romania but was unable to find a mountain pass of black rock in Pyrenees or the Alps. He then asked experts at a nearby university to use their geology computer to help him find the location he wanted. With the help of production designer John Box, Mann found an abandoned slate quarry in Wales. The quarry was 150 feet deep and a lift or a crane had to take people in and out. Cinematographer Alex Thomson placed his lights on cherry pickers around the edge of the quarry and at one point 80 miles per hour winds threatened to knock the lights in.

Mann first wrote the screenplay and then made additional changes while shooting the film. “Now the words are plastic, flexible,” Mann remarked in an interview at the time. He constantly rewrote dialogue before shooting which frustrated his actors. Two days before a scene was shot the actors would get new pages. Then, a day before they got additional new pages. Mann storyboarded the entire film only to get on the set and realize that the lighting was different and so he threw them out, opting instead to work on a more instinctual level. On the set, Mann listened to the music of Tangerine Dream and Laurie Anderson. He was particularly taken with Anderson’s vocal stylings and wanted Glenn to speak like she does in her songs.

By certain accounts, the shoot was a particularly grueling one. The crew worked 16-18 hour days in cold, rainy weather. In particular, make-up artist Nick Maley remembers that he had to change make-up effects three times in one week. He claimed that Mann did not listen to more experienced crew members and that eight of them suffered nervous breakdowns as a result of the film’s demanding schedule. Maley also claims that he was exhausted a lot of the time from the miscommunication he experienced with Mann over prosthetics for Glaeken. Six weeks into filming, Mann changed the color of Molasar’s final costume, which meant some scenes had to be re-shot.

Mann described Molasar as the essence of “just sheer power, and the appeal of power, and the worship of power, a belief in power, a seduction of power.” This is a description that could easily apply to future Mann antagonists, Francis Dollarhyde and Hannibal Lecktor in Manhunter. Mike Carter played Molasar and spoke highly of Mann: “His direction was simple and clear—always the best. The physical presentation of Molasar was always carefully worked out. The way in which I played Molasar was pretty much my decision. Obviously he would have changed things if he didn’t like it.” However, Carter was not blind to the problems that Mann faced on the film: “We went over budget and over schedule, but he was trying to make a particular kind of film, almost a German Expressionist movie, and I’m not surprised it was as long and expensive as it was. It needed to be a big-budget movie.”

There was a six-month delay because of the death of special effects expert, Wally Veevers two weeks into post-production, forcing Mann to rethink the film’s effects after the cast and crew had departed. Without Veevers to provide the needed opticals for Molasar, the creature resembled the Michelin Man as opposed to an ominous force of evil. To make matters worse, Veevers had not made any storyboards for his vision of the movie and no one knew his methods. The production went over schedule by 22 weeks and tens of millions of dollars.

When it came to the finale, Mann chose between two different endings. Glaeken versus Molasar in the dark cave of the Keep or on its summit. The director went with the former but was forced to scale it down. Originally, he had wanted a more visually elaborate, ending with Glaeken fighting Molasar with a giant laser coming from the Keep that evolved into something akin to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). After Veever’s death, Paramount did not give Mann enough money to finish the film and he had to abandon certain sequences. French artist Enki Bilal was brought in to help design Molasar. He traveled to Shepperton Studios five or six times and felt that the film was ruined during the editing process. Special effects make-up artist Bob Keen felt that one of the biggest problems was the long, grueling shoot and that by the end of it a lot of the crew members had left.

The current version of the film runs 90 minutes but rumors say that the rough cut ran over two hours. The Keep was released on December 16, 1983 in 508 theaters, grossing $1 million in its opening weekend. It went on to make $4.2 million in the United States and was a commercial and critical failure. In his review for Time magazine, Richard Corliss wrote, “It boasts some pictures as pretty as any to be seen on a gallery wall, and, in narrative terms, it is a mess.” Vincent Canby, in his review for The New York Times, wrote, “The movie makes no sense as either melodrama or metaphysics, so that its expensive special effects go up in smoke. Literally ... At the screening I saw, the film's soundtrack, as stuffed with talk as with ominous sounds and music by Tangerine Dream, was so sibilant that I longed to stuff cotton in my ears or, at least, to hear a character who lisped.” At the time, Mann felt that The Keep was “emotionally deeper because it tries to get at the way you think and feel in the way dreams work.” However, after many years had passed, Mann admitted, “The Keep was really hard because I did something I swore I’d never do again. And that is that I went into pre-production without a completed screenplay.”

Author F. Paul Wilson joined in on the critical bashing of Mann’s film and dispelled the rumor that it might have been the victim of studio interference. “The film followed his (bad) script pretty faithfully. He simply decided that he wouldn’t mention the word ‘vampire,’ anywhere in the film. Of course, that’s the major red herring in the story.” Wilson felt that Mann did not understand the novel or how to adapt it. “He did not build character. He did not tell a coherent story. When I read the script, I wrote to him and I pointed out all of this to him in a very gentle, non ego trampling way, I thought. But he ignored me.” To put it mildly, Wilson was not happy with Mann’s film as he commented in an interview, “the dialogue was wooden, dumb, phony and stupid. And the direction, all those pregnant pauses ... And I would have chucked that stupid looking monstrosity that passed for Molasar. What a joke!” However, like what happened to Lynch after the soul-crushing failure of Dune, Mann went back to familiar subject matter and ended up making one of the best films of his career, Manhunter. I admire Mann’s ambition to tackle a new genre for him at the time but he was clearly out of his depth and it shows in the final film. Since The Keep he has wisely stuck to his strengths – urban crime films and historical biopics.

Also, check out this excellent analysis of the film over at the Wonders in the Dark blog and this comprehensive fan site.
 

Heat

It seems rather fitting that it took nearly 15 years for Michael Mann to get his ambitious crime epic Heat (1995) made and it has been 15 years since it was unleashed in theaters. After the commercial and critical success of The Last of the Mohicans (1992), he parlayed its commercial and critical success to get his pet project made. He was able to cast legendary actors Robert De Niro and Al Pacino as the leads in what would be their first the on-screen appearance together in a film (they were in The Godfather: Part II but never appeared in the same scene). Mann returned to a 1986 draft of a screenplay that had originated before he made The Jericho Mile (1979). He now had a much clearer idea of how he wanted Heat to be structured and decided to expand its scope.

At the core of Heat is the relationship between career criminal Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) and dedicated cop, Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino). Mann takes the career criminal from Thief (1981) and the intensely dedicated cop from Manhunter (1986) and places them in the same film together with the sprawling metropolis that is Los Angeles as its backdrop. It is a deadly cat and mouse game realized on an epic level. Imagine Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956) but on the scale of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

The opening of Heat introduces the two main protagonists, McCauley and Hanna without any dialogue. Mann relies entirely on their actions to illustrate their defining characteristics. McCauley, disguised as a paramedic, steals an ambulance. It is how he does it that is so impressive. He walks through a busy hospital purposefully, taking in everything and touching nothing so that he leaves no clues behind for the police to find later. Within a matter of moments he is gone.

We first meet Hanna as he is making passionate love to his wife, Justine (Diane Venora). From the beginning, Mann shows a sharp contrast between Neil and Vincent’s professional and personal lives. McCauley is all business. His life is devoted to preparing for his next score. Mann remarked in an interview that the character “is not an archetypal ex-convict, who steals mindlessly until he gets busted back. This guy is methodical and good at what he does. He's going to accumulate a certain amount of capital, and then he's going to boogie. He has a doctrine of having no attachments, nothing in his life he can't walk out on in thirty seconds flat.” Hanna is married — albeit in a relationship rife with problems but at least he has some semblance of a personal life. During the course of the film, these two men will switch roles and this will determine their respective fates.

Hanna may have a personal life but it is a relationship in decline. He is on his third marriage and is gradually losing touch with Justine and her daughter, Lauren (Natalie Portman). After Hanna and Justine make love she tries to invite him to breakfast but he brushes her off to hook up with one of his partners. But not before he comes off as a bit of hypocrite. He criticizes Lauren’s real father for being late in picking her up and for standing her up repeatedly in the past, but he hardly pays attention to her or her mother either. This scene also establishes one of Mann’s prevalent themes: the fracture that exists between parents and their children.

Hanna is not in his element in a domestic setting and this becomes obvious when he appears at the crime scene of the armored car heist perpetrated by McCauley and his crew at the beginning of the film. As soon as Hanna walks on the scene he immediately takes control. It is a real treat to see Pacino act out this scene. He dominates it both physically — in the way he gestures and moves around — and verbally, in the authoritative tone that he speaks to the people around him. Pacino displays a confidence of an actor totally committed to his role, which is appropriate considering his character is someone who is completely committed to his profession. With little prompting, Hanna’s subordinates fill him in on the evidence they found and expertly piece together what they think happened. Hanna listens intently, absorbs everything and then quickly analyzes the situation. He assigns specific tasks to his men with all the efficiency of a professional. This is the complete opposite of what we saw him like at home. He barely hears what Justine has to say and briefly acknowledges Lauren’s presence before quickly leaving for work.

If Hanna is all about the verbal side of the professional Mann protagonist, McCauley is the flip side of the same coin. He is the quiet individual who lets his actions speak for him. Mann defines McCauley’s character visually. This is achieved not only in the exciting armored truck heist sequence — the essence of ruthless efficiency but, more significantly, when he returns to his home. Like most Mann protagonists, he lives in a Spartan, empty place. The establishing shot utilizes a blue filter that saturates the frame, with the ocean infinitely stretching out in the background. This is reminiscent of the scene in Manhunter where Graham and Molly make love in their bedroom. However, Mann uses this scene to illustrate that, unlike Hanna, McCauley is a loner, a prisoner trapped in his own empty surroundings. This is further reinforced by a close-up of his handgun; placed on a coffee table. As he walks over to the large windows overlooking the ocean, the gun looms large, upsetting the composition of the frame as it dwarfs McCauley. He is a man dominated by his profession — it defines who he is as a person. The camera pans up and we see him standing in the middle of this large, empty room, the frames of the window acting as bars, metaphorically trapping him.

Mann uses architecture to illustrate McCauley’s personality. His apartment is comprised of large, blank white walls, cabinets with the bare minimum of dishes and very little furniture. There is just enough to make it functional. This simple design is also reflected in his fashion sense: simple gray or black suits with a white dress shirt. According to Mann, this was an important clue to McCauley’s character: “His main job, as he sees it, in the way he’s elected to live his life, is to minimize risk. That’s why he wears gray suits and white shirts—he doesn’t want to have anything about his personal appearance that’s memorable. He’s a gray man, just some figure who moves through the umber of a poorly lit coffee shop. It’s all invisible, and it’s strictly pragmatic.” Like Frank in Thief, Graham in Manhunter, and later, Jeffrey Wigand in The Insider (1999), McCauley is yet another Mann protagonist who is constantly shown to be a solitary figure in an empty room. He claims, at one point, that “I’m alone. I’m not lonely,” but he is a forlorn figure or else he would not feel the need to get involved with Eady (Amy Brenneman).

Heat is different from other crime films in that it goes to great lengths to show how those around these criminals and the police that chase them are affected by what their loved ones do. Most of the relationships are very dysfunctional and none more so than between Chris Sherilis (Val Kilmer), one of McCauley’s crew, and his wife Charlene (Ashley Judd). He gambles away all of the money he makes on scores and this makes her very upset. She tells him, “It means we’re not making forward progress like real grown-up adults living our lives.” They argue and she makes it clear that, for her, it is not about the money but their son, Dominick. She is concerned for his safety and well being. For her role, Ashley Judd met several women who had been prostitutes and were now housewives. Mann located them through the convicts’ wives and ex-cons he had interviewed in his pre-production research. Some of them had turned tricks in their teens and were now middle-aged housewives selling real estate.

This scene of domestic disharmony is paralleled by Hanna’s own problems. When he comes home Justine informs him that she had dinner ready for them four hours ago. She tells him, “Every time I try to maintain a consistent mood between us you withdraw.” He replies, “I got three dead bodies on a sidewalk off Venice Boulevard.” Hanna tries to articulate something resembling an apology but he is unable. This is not good enough for her and she leaves the room leaving him alone and frustrated. The final shot is of him sitting alone watching T.V. Justine, like Charlene, is frustrated with her relationship. Both women are unhappy and not afraid to let their significant others know how they feel. Justine does not understand Vincent’s devotion to his job or his obsession with taking Neil and his crew down and this results in a rift between the two that is not repaired by the film’s conclusion. Both Hanna and Chris are unable to explain themselves to their wives. They may be the best at what they do but their personal lives are a mess.

Up until this point Neil has stayed faithful to his personal credo, “Don't keep anything in your life you're not willing to walk out on in thirty seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.” This begins to change when he meets Eady at a coffee shop. Initially, he is guarded and stand-offish — an attitude that comes with his job. But once he realizes that she is genuinely interested in him, he softens somewhat but is still evasive, lying to her about what he does (a salesman) and asking her a lot of questions but offering little information about himself. He gives out only vague details: “My father, I don’t know where he is. I got a brother somewhere.” However, he does offer one interesting insight into his character. As they look out at the city lights of Los Angeles he tells her about his dream: “In Fiji, they have this iridescent algae. They come out once a year in the water … I’m going there someday.” Like Frank’s dream of a family in Thief and Wigand’s vision of seeing his children playing in The Insider, McCauley will be unable to realize his ambitions because of his failure to adhere to his own personal code. His fatal flaw is that he develops feelings for Eady and thereby betraying himself. Mann foreshadows McCauley’s inevitable downfall as a result of this relationship with tragic sounding electronic music that plays while McCauley and Eady kiss.

The film’s centerpiece is undeniably the classic meeting of Pacino and De Niro, on-screen together for the first time in the careers that takes place over coffee at Mantelli's restaurant in Beverly Hills. Although, ironically, Mann edits the scene so that each man is shown in over-the-shoulder shots and we don’t actually see them face-to-face at any time in the scene. This is the moment when both men size each other up and tell each other their personal philosophies. The dialogue between the two men reveals a lot about who they are:

Neil: If you’re one me and you gotta move when I move, how do you expect to keep a marriage?

Vincent: So, then if you spot me coming around that corner, you just gonna walk out on this woman? Not say goodbye?

Neil: That’s the discipline.

Vincent: That’s pretty vacant.

Neil: It is what it is. It’s that or we both better go do something else, pal.

For Mann, the coffee shop scene between De Niro and Pacino is when "every theme and every storyline in the picture winds up in that scene. It's very much the nexus of the film." Mann made sure that nothing distracted from the exchange between these two men. He wanted the place to be as invisible as possible with the “background is as monochromatic and as minimalist as I could get it, because, boy, I did not want anything to take away from what was happening on Al's face and Bob's face.”

It makes sense, then, that these two men understand each other better than they do their wives or girlfriends. They are more open with each other than with their loved ones because there is a mutual respect and bond between them. Over coffee they tell each other their dreams and Neil’s is particularly illuminating: “I have one where I’m drowning. And I gotta wake myself up and start breathing or I die in my sleep.” Vincent asks him, “You know what that’s about?” To which Neil replies, “Yeah, not enough time.” Like Frank in Thief, Neil’s dilemma is that he does not have enough time to do everything he needs to do. Neil is a fascinating variation on Frank’s character in the sense that he too is forced to decide between preserving a relationship and his work but unlike Frank, he wastes too much time deciding on which one to follow. When Neil finally does make up his mind it is too late and he is punished for his indecision.

Heat’s most exciting action sequence is the now famous bank heist scene. Right from the beginning, Mann establishes a quick pace as Neil enters the bank with pulsating electronic music that anticipates what is going to happen. With incredible precision and timing, McCauley and his crew have taken out the guards, have control of the bank and are taking out large quantities of money in under a minute. The music is underplayed but still effective in creating tension during the sequence. Once McCauley and his crew emerge from the bank and Chris fires the first shot, the music stops and the rest of this exciting sequence plays out with no music — only the deafening roar of the guns firing as McCauley and his men try to escape and turn the streets of Los Angeles into a war zone. Mann made sure that the gunshots sounded realistic and went to great pains to make sure he got the right sounds for the machine guns. He said, “There's a certain pattern to the reverberation. It makes you think you've never heard that in a film before so it feels very real and authentic. Then you really believe the jeopardy these people are in.”

Mann alternates between shaky, hand-held cameras and fluid tracking shots with kinetic editing that brilliantly conveys the exciting action that is taking place. One of the reasons why this sequence works so well and comes across as being so authentic is due in large part to one of the technical advisors for the film: Andy McNab, a Special Forces soldier who infiltrated enemy lines in the Persian Gulf War to sabotage SCUD missiles. De Niro gave Mann his copy of Bravo Two Zero, written by McNab. It so impressed the filmmaker that he hired him to train the cast how to shoot guns for two months. McNab worked from a tape of L.A. Takedown, Mann’s T.V. movie rough draft of Heat, to get an idea of what Mann wanted. The actors rehearsed carrying around the weight of the money they would be stealing in the bank heist. De Niro had to practice how he would carry Kilmer once he was shot and how to fire his weapon with one hand.

Before filming the bank heist sequence, Mann and McNab conducted a dry run with the actors on a real bank. De Niro, Tom Sizemore and Kilmer all wore disguises and body armor. Only the bank manager knew what was really going on. A couple of guys covertly videotaped everything from cameras in bags. The sequence was to be shot at the Far East Bank in Los Angeles. Location manager Janice Polley and the producers spent months beforehand meeting with officials of the bank explaining what was involved. Mann and his crew took over the entire financial district of the city every weekend for five weeks. They were allowed to shoot between 6 pm on Friday and 5 am Monday morning. The production shut down 5th street in L.A. and notified hotels and residents within earshot. The bank heist sequence was so authentic that in 1998, two men foolishly tried to copy what was done in the film. They robbed a bank in L.A. and as McNab remembered, they even "delayed the robbery for three days so they could get exactly the same bags as Kilmer had, and they used machine guns, body armor—everything."

The rest of Heat plays out the aftermath and fallout of the bank heist as McCauley ties up loose ends and attempts to escape with Eady before Hanna can catch him. Ultimately, Heat is about choices. Neil’s final choice in the film is also his most crucial. He has to decide whether to stay with Eady or run on his own from Hanna who is now in hot pursuit. However, Neil hesitates too long and this is what ultimately defeats him. He goes against his own personal code and is punished. Hanna does not and is willing to sacrifice his personal life so that he can take McCauley down. The film ends as it began — without dialogue as Hanna tracks Neil down.

The origins of Heat were based in large part from the experiences of an old friend of Mann's, Chuck Adamson. The police officer had been chasing down a high-line thief named Neil McCauley in Chicago in 1963. One day, "they simply bumped into one another. Chuck didn't know what to do: arrest him, shoot him or have a cup of coffee." Heat was also based on another person according to Mann: “Another is a guy I can't really talk about, who's bright, intuitive, and driven, and runs large operations against drug cartels in foreign countries. He's a singularly focused individual and much of the core of Hanna's character comes from him.” From these two sources, Mann created a story that explored the relationship between Neil McCauley, a career criminal and Vincent Hanna, a dedicated cop with very similar approaches to their professions but on opposite sides of the law.

Mann wrote an early draft of Heat in 1979 that was 180 pages and based on real people he knew personally and by reputation in Chicago. He wrote another draft after making Thief with no intention of directing it himself. During a promotional interview for The Keep (1983), Mann talked about making Heat into a film and was still looking for another director to make it. In the late 1980s, Mann tried to produce the film several times and offered it to his friend and fellow filmmaker, Walter Hill but he turned it down. Mann was still not satisfied with the script, which had developed the character of McCauley but Hanna still needed work.

After making The Last of the Mohicans, Mann returned to a 1986 draft of Heat and decided that he would make it himself. He felt that the L.A. Robbery-Homicide division would be an ideal basis for a television show and took his script and “abridged it severely. I abstracted probably something like 110 pages from 180 pages ... so it’s lacking in the sense that it’s not fully developed.” The result was a made-for-television movie entitled, L.A. Takedown. It was an incredibly fast shoot – uncharacteristic for the methodical Mann – with only ten days of pre-production and 19 days of shooting. In comparison, Heat would have a six-month pre-production period and a 107-day shooting schedule. Takedown starred Scott Plank as Hanna and Alex McArthur as Patrick McLaren, the character that became Neil McCauley in Heat, with Michael Rooker, Xander Berkley (who has a small role in Heat), and Daniel Baldwin. It aired on NBC on August 27, 1989 at 9 pm. In many respects, Takedown was another draft of Heat. The director said in an interview, "it had a similar kind of nucleus, which was the rapport between the thief and the cop." In the L.A. Takedown script, McCauley's gang is not fleshed out all that much. The Chris Shiherlis sub-plot does not exist, the bungled bank robbery sting is gone, and Hanna's step-daughter's sub-plot does not exist. NBC was willing to buy the show if Mann recast the lead actor. He refused and the network did not pick it up.

After L.A. Takedown, Mann had a much clearer idea of how he wanted Heat to be structured. "I charted the film out like a 2 hr 45 min piece of music, so I'd know where to be smooth, where not to be smooth, where to be staccato, where to use a pulse like a heartbeat." In 1994, Mann showed producer Art Linson another draft of Heat over lunch and told him that he was thinking of updating it. Linson read it, loved it and agreed to make the film with Mann. On April 5, 1994, Variety announced that Mann was abandoning his James Dean biopic and prepping Heat with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro attached to the project with filming to take place in either Chicago or Los Angeles.

De Niro got the script first and then showed it to Pacino who read it and wanted to be a part of the film. De Niro thought it was a "very good story, had a particular feel to it, a reality and authenticity." To research their roles Mann took Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, and De Niro to Folsom prison and interviewed several inmates. Sizemore talked to one career criminal in particular who was a multi-millionaire and “had socked away several million dollars and continued to do it, you know one more score ... The guys we educated ourselves about only do big jobs, they won't do anything under $2 million. It's all true, that's what's amazing,” the actor remembered.

Scouting locations for Heat started in August of 1994 and continued through December with location manager Janice Polley, who had first worked with Mann on Last of the Mohicans. She had a staff of three to four people who went all over Los Angeles to find locations that had not been filmed before — no easy task. Mann let them know the kinds of houses each character would live in according to their income and financial status, the look of the house and the surrounding area. For example, Chris Shiherlis lived in Sherman Oaks, Vincent Hanna lived in Santa Monica, Neil McCauley's house was on the beach in Malibu, and Eady's house was in the Hollywood Hills. Polley did her job: less than 10% of the 85 locations used had previously appeared in a film. Not a single soundstage was used.

It was important for Mann to capture a certain vibe of L.A. It was almost another character in the film. The director remembers, “I wanted to capture basically the way the city felt to me being out in the middle of it at two in the morning or on top of the gas tower or on top of a roof or flying over it with the LAPD helicopters. You know, there’s a glow that it has, it’s unique western.” The most challenging location for Polley to get was Los Angeles Airport, one of the busiest in the country. After much negotiation, permission was given to shoot in a restricted area where the radar towers are located. At the last minute, Polley got a call. The Unabomber had threatened the post office at LAX and the FBI were called in to investigate. A delay in filming would have cost the production thousands of dollars. They met with LAX security and the FBI and it was determined that the area they were going to shoot in was far enough away from any potential danger.

Heat was released on December 15, 1995 in 1,325 theaters, grossing $8.4 million on its opening weekend. The film was a commercial success, grossing $67.4 million in North America and $120 million in the rest of the world for a worldwide total of $187.4 million.

Heat received mostly positive reviews from critics at the time. In his review for Time magazine, Richard Schickel praised Mann’s direction: “An opening sequence that may be the best armored-car robbery ever placed on film. He proceeds to a crazily orchestrated bank heist that goes awry and finishes in a wild firefight on a crowded downtown street that is a masterpiece of sustained invention.” Newsweek magazine’s David Ansen wrote, “Mann’s not interested in good or evil, but in behavior: the choices people make, the internal pressures that can cause the best-laid plans to go awry.” Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote, “It's not just an action picture. Above all, the dialogue is complex enough to allow the characters to say what they're thinking: They are eloquent, insightful, fanciful, poetic when necessary. They're not trapped with clichés.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “The huge, well-chosen cast for Heat attests to Mr. Mann's eye for both esthetic interest and acting talent. Even small roles are so well emphasized that they show these performers off to fine advantage.”

However, in his review for the Washington Post, Hal Hinson wrote, “Ultimately, though, the movie never transcends the limitations of its Hemingwayesque, men-with-men attitudes. Its point of view about the innate violence of men is essentially that of Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, but while the idea itself remains valid and even relevant, Mann cancels all that out with a ridiculous ending that suggests some sort of final spiritual, metaphysical mind-meld. To call it mythic absurdity is a kindness.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “B-“ rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “Mann's most perverse decision was to cast these two legends and then keep them apart from each other. Half-way through, they finally get an extended dialogue in a coffee shop (it's the first time the actors have ever been in a scene together), and you can feel their joy in performing. We're not watching McCauley and Hanna anymore; we're watching De Niro and Pacino trying to out-insinuate each other. For a few moments, Heat truly has some.”

One of the problems critics (and some viewers) had with Heat was Pacino's sudden, loud outbursts of outrageous dialogue. However, the actor justified his character's behavior in an interview: “I think that the character is prone to these kind of explosive irrational outbursts. A lot of those interrogations and that kind of thing, I got from watching detectives working, going into a kind of, flipping into a kind of–flipomatic, as they say–this state of just general chaos in order to get something. The hysteria shakes up the subject and gets to the truth.” Mann further elaborated in an interview where he explained that Pacino's character "will rock that person of his foundation, to the point where the man loses whatever defense mechanisms he may have set up against this detective coming in."

Heat has gone on to inspire numerous other films and filmmakers. Directors for both the Hong Kong crime film Infernal Affairs (2002) and the British gangster film Layer Cake (2004) have cited the look of Heat as an influence on their own work. Most impressively, before going into production on The Dark Knight (2008), director Christopher Nolan screened Heat for all his department heads. He said, “I always felt Heat to be a remarkable demonstration of how you can create a vast universe with one city and balance a very large number of characters and their emotional journeys in an effective manner.” Indeed, the bank heist that begins the film is reminiscent of the one staged in Heat right down to a cameo by William Fichtner as a defiant bank manager in a nice reference to the actor’s role in Mann’s film.