Brothers

So far, most films about the current war in the Middle East have not fared well at the box office with efforts like Home of the Brave (2006), In the Valley of Elah (2007) and Stop-Loss (2008) getting limited distribution or underperforming at the box office (or both), often garnering little interest with mainstream audiences. People don't want to be reminded of the problems we face over there or the effects of it here at home when our soldiers return. To counter this attitude with his film Brothers (2009), director Jim Sheridan cannily cast marquee names like Natalie Portman, Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal in an attempt to appeal to a mainstream audience. A remake of Susanna Bier's 2004 Danish film Brodre, Brothers performed modestly well at the box office, but was largely unseen and remains an absorbing look at just not what soldiers go through, but how their loved ones deal with them once they get home. It also features powerful performances from the three aforementioned lead actors.

Captain Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire) is a United States Marine heading back to Afghanistan for another tour of duty. He’s a loving family man with a beautiful wife named Grace (Natalie Portman) and two adorable daughters, Isabelle (Bailee Madison) and Maggie (Taylor Geare). Tobey Maguire and Natalie Portman are instantly believable as a married couple that clearly loves each other. There is a familiarity that couples have and even though they don’t have much screen-time to convey it before Sam ships off, they pull it off in the way their characters look and interact with each other. In contrast, his brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) has just been released from prison after serving time for armed robbery. He’s the black sheep of the family and Grace doesn’t think too highly of her husband’s brother, but is nice to him in person. While Sam and Tommy get along fine there is tangible tension between their father (Sam Shepard) and latter. This is evident in an uncomfortable family dinner where their father makes it known that he sees Sam as a hero for serving his country and Tommy as a disappointment, causing the latter to make a scene. You can cut the tension with a knife during this scene until Tommy’s controlled outburst brings long simmering resentments to the surface.

While on a mission over hostile territory, Sam’s helicopter is shot down and he’s presumed dead. Sheridan makes the right choice when depicting the standard scene of the wife being told that her husband has been killed by showing Grace coming to the door and breaking down once she sees the military officers. No words need to be said and the scene ends there because Portman’s reaction says enough. Instead, Sheridan shows Grace’s full-blown emotional breakdown when Tommy stops by later that night to return Sam’s truck. Rather than console her, he erupts in anger and storms off. It’s an odd reaction, but in character as Tommy is clearly someone with a lot rage inside of him.

Tommy starts spending more time with his brother’s family, helping around the house and the rest of the film plays out the growing attraction between him and Grace. Meanwhile, Sam survives the attack on his helicopter and is being held prisoner and tortured.

Natalie Portman turns in a wonderfully nuanced performance as a woman trying to process the unbelievable grief she is experiencing. There are scenes where you can see Grace putting on a brave face for those around her, especially her children, but every so often she lets it slip and reveals the hurt that exists under the surface. For example, there is a scene where everyone throws a surprise birthday party for Grace and as she’s about to blow out the candles on her cake. There is a moment where she has a distant, haunted look before catching herself and regaining her pleasant façade. It’s a nice bit of acting from Portman and throughout the film she conveys a complex range of emotions as the actress shows how Grace processes the grief of her husband’s death and her emerging, conflicted feelings for Tommy.

Brothers is a slow burn, slice-of-life film as Sheridan dives deep into this family, examining the dynamic between Tommy and his father, a veteran of the Vietnam War. There are hints that his strict, perhaps even abusive style of parenting pushed Tommy to the kind of life he leads – an aimless ne’er’-do-well with a past full of regrets. The more time he spends with Grace and her daughters, the more of an influence they have on him. They provide a stabilizing effect by giving him a sense of purpose. Jake Gyllenhaal does a nice job of conveying Tommy’s inner turmoil, which he carries around with him. Initially, he gets to play the brooding, moody brother, but over the course of the film he transforms into someone who is more open and responsible. It’s a natural progression that the actor conveys expertly.

Tobey Maguire’s character also undergoes a transformation from genial family man to paranoid soldier suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder after spending several months as a prisoner of war. The actor goes through an impressive physical transformation as Sam is beaten and deprived of sleep so that he becomes a shadow of his former self. He does what he has to do in order to survive. If Brothers has a flaw it is that too much time is spent in Afghanistan showing how Sam’s humanity is stripped away by his captors. I understand the purpose of these scenes – they explain his behavior later on when he finally returns home, but as they continue and Sam’s situation gets bleaker, the balance that Sheridan has maintained up to this point is threatened. The Afghanistan scenes could have been left up to our imagination and conveyed through well-written expositional dialogue delivered by the talented Maguire.

As he demonstrated with In America (2002), Sheridan has a real affinity for getting naturalistic performances out of child actors and Brothers is no different, especially from Bailee Madison who plays the slightly older of the two daughters. Isabelle is more aware of what is going on and that something isn’t right with her father. This realization, as it plays briefly over her face in one scene, is absolutely heartbreaking. As a result, she is more emotional than her happy-go-lucky sibling. Madison really stands out during a tense dinner scene towards the end of the film when Isabelle intentionally baits her father. She is acting out, like a petulant child, but is also the only one in the family who has the courage to address the big elephant in the room – Sam’s increasingly erratic behavior.

Originally, Jim Sheridan was writing a story about two brothers growing up in Ireland but couldn’t get the financing for it. He ended up watching Susanna Bier's 2004 Danish film Brodre and liked it so much he thought it could be remade for North American audiences, changing the emphasis from an illicit love triangle to that of the family. Jake Gyllenhaal was the first actor to sign on, followed by Tobey Maguire and Natalie Portman. 

At the time she signed on to do Brothers, Portman made a conscious decision to pick more mature roles: “I’m trying to find roles that demand more adulthood from me because you can get stuck in a very awful cute cycle as a woman in film – especially being such a small person.” To prepare for the part, the actress met with Army wives in order to understand how they managed their lives. She also bonded with the young actresses playing her daughters by having them over for baking parties and hanging out with them between takes. She and Maguire were able to play husband and wife so well because they had known each other for 14 years prior. She said, “Just knowing someone for that long is great history to have when you’re walking on set and playing husband and wife.” In addition, she had also known co-star Gyllenhaal for ten years.

During rehearsals and on set, Sheridan played a live version of Bruce Springsteen’s “The River” to get Gyllenhaal in the mood of a scene where Tommy and Grace share a quiet moment together. For Gyllenhaal, the song reminded him of the connection to his family, in particular his father. In working with the child actors, Sheridan had his own specific method: “what I do is present a scene to them as a problem, a kind of puzzle, and then ask them questions, what they think the character is thinking, or wants to do.”

Brothers received mixed reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave it three-and-a-half out of four stars and praised Maguire’s performance: “This becomes Tobey Maguire’s film to dominate, and I’ve never seen these dark depths in him before. Actors possess a great gift to surprise us, if they find the right material in their hands.” In his review for The New York Times, A.O. Scott wrote, “And Brothers itself – a smart, well-meaning project – never quite pulls itself together. It has a vague, half-finished feeling, as if it had not figured out what it was trying to do. Which may amount to a kind of realism – an accurate reflection of where we are in Afghanistan.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “C+” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “Brothers isn’t badly acted, but as directed by the increasingly impersonal Jim Sheridan, it’s lumbering and heavy-handed, a film that piles on overwrought dramatic twists until it begins to creak under the weight of its presumed significance.”

USA Today gave the film three out of four stars and Claudia Puig wrote, “Bailee Madison and Taylor Geare are excellent as Sam and Grace’s young daughters, derailed by their dad’s scary bouts of anger and his newfound coldness. The youthful portrayals recall the indelible roles of the young daughters in Sheridan’s wonderful 2003 film, In America.” The Los Angeles Times’ Betsey Sharkey wrote, “There will be echoes of that passion and poignancy in Brothers. But unlike the clear voice of those earlier films, Sheridan seems as conflicted as the Cahills about their virtues and failings.” Finally, in his review for the Washington Post, Michael O’Sullivan wrote, “Brothers is depressing as hell. And, like most war movies these days, it ends on a note that’s far from hopeful. But it’s good, and wise, and it feels true. Meaning, it hurts.”

Brothers is a fusion of Sheridan’s fascination with people put under extraordinary duress, like In the Name of the Father (1993), and families dealing with hardships, like In America. At times, Brothers feels like one of the films from the 1980s that dealt with families struggling to understand loved ones that had served time in the Vietnam War – In Country (1989) and Jacknife (1989) are two that come immediately to mind as spiritual antecedents to Brothers. In Sheridan’s capable hands, this film is a nicely observed character study that tries to show the trauma a soldier experience during war and what their family goes through at home, perhaps lingering a little too long on the hardships Sam endures in Afghanistan.

Brothers is a good film about an uncomfortable topic. It doesn’t offer any easy answers – how can it while we are still mired in this war? This will only come with time, but it exists as a document of where we are now. The war in the Middle East may be an unpopular one, but it is important that the stories of the people that fought it over there and continue to do so back home are told. By telling their stories maybe we can process how the war has affected us as a country.

SOURCES

Ditzian, Eric. “Brothers’ Star Tobey Maguire, Natalie Portman Talk ‘Growing Up Together.’” MTV.com. December 2, 2009.

Farquharson, Vanessa. “Jim Sheridan Reflects on the Betrayals at Brothers’ Core.” The Financial Post. December 4, 2009.

Freydkin, Donna. “Natalie Portman Transitions into Adult Role in Brothers.” USA Today. December 4, 2009.

“Springsteen’s The River Brings Gyllenhaal to Tears on Set.” WENN Entertainment News Wire Service. December 3, 2009.

Thompson, Bob. “When Irish Eyes are Filming.” Vancouver Sun. December 4, 2009.

Vaughan, R.M. “You leave it to the actors, really, to the acting.” Globe & Mail. December 4, 2009.

Thor: The Dark World

With the phenomenal success of The Avengers (2012), the next wave of Marvel Comics movies were bound to feed off of its good will and this was certainly true of Iron Man 3 (2013), which was a massive hit. Next up is Thor: The Dark World (2013), the sequel to 2011’s Thor, which introduced audiences to the version of the Norse god that Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby created back in the early 1960s in the pages of Journey into Mystery. I was never a big fan of the character, but director Kenneth Branagh and his screenwriters Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz and Don Payne did an excellent job of introducing Thor and his world by juxtaposing his adventures on Earth with the crisis he faced on Asgard, the otherworldly realm where he lives. Branagh maintained a delicate balancing act between remaining faithful to the spirit of the source material and making it cinematic all the while giving the proceedings a certain Shakespearean flair. The end result was very entertaining and engaging movie. With this sequel would Marvel be able to replicate the quality of the first movie and build on it?

The Dark World takes place after the events of The Avengers. Thor’s adopted brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) has been banished to the dungeons for eternity while Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and his friends and fellow warriors Volstagg (Ray Stevenson), Frandral (Zachary Levi) and Sif (Jaimie Alexander) are cleaning up Loki’s mess by bringing order to the Nine Realms in an exciting battle sequence that not only does a nice job of re-introducing these characters, but ends on an amusing note.

The people of Asgard are enjoying a rare interlude of peace, but Thor still thinks of Dr. Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), the beautiful astrophysicist he left back on Earth. She has been unsuccessfully trying her hand at dating while her colleague Dr. Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard) has lost his marbles running around Stonehenge naked, babbling about the Convergence, a rare occurrence that would see all Nine Realms align. While checking out a strange gravitational anomaly, Jane is transported into another realm where she’s infected by Aether, a substance that a race known as the Dark Elves tried to use eons ago in an attempt to unite the realms and plunge the universe into darkness. Jane’s discovery has awoken them from suspended animation and their leader Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) is ready to renew his war against the Asgardians. Thor realizes that something is not right with Jane and takes her to Asgard and together they deal with the Dark Elves threat.

The Dark World does a nice job of upping the stakes considerably as Asgard is directly threatened as is Thor’s family, which makes it even more personal for our hero. Loki is back and once again gets the lion’s share of the juicy one-liners and scenes to steal. It’s a plum role that Tom Hiddleston clearly relishes playing. As he did in Thor, Chris Hemsworth maintains the right mix of cocky swagger and righteous heroism while playing well off of the always mischievous Loki. Hemsworth brings a steely determination and a physicality that is ideal for Thor. While the film moves at a brisk pace and is almost never dull, the scenes between Hemsworth and Hiddleston are easily the best parts as the rapport between the two actors, that has been cultivated over three movies now, is a considerable part of The Dark World’s charm.

Much like in Thor, Natalie Portman’s Jane is often relegated to the sidelines, due to her lack of superpowers, despite a half-hearted attempt to drum up some jealousy for her affection for Thor from Sif. However, after being a damsel in distress for two-thirds of the movie, she is given a lot to do during the action-packed climax, which thankfully redeems Portman’s character somewhat.

There is a bit more humor in The Dark World, which offsets the dark intensity of the epic struggle that is waged throughout, and this is due in large part to Kat Dennings and Stellan Skarsgard who reprise their roles as Jane’s colleagues. The former provides her trademark dry sarcastic wit while the latter hams it up as a man who treads the line of sanity based on his experiences in The Avengers, but, as it turns out, might not be as crazy as everyone assumes.

The hiring of frequent Game of Thrones director Alan Taylor was an excellent choice as he brings a decidedly grittier edge to The Dark World and also applies a refreshingly straightforward approach to the action sequences. He keeps the movie’s pace brisk, but knows when to slow things down for a breather. As much as I thoroughly enjoyed Thor, I think that The Dark World edges it ever so slightly because I felt more invested in Thor’s struggle this time out because there was more at stake on a personal level for the character what with his family personally attacked in a way that really hit home more than anything in the first movie. I was also pleasantly surprised at the amped up science fiction element with spacecraft flying around blasting lasers at each other and how this was seamlessly blended in with the more traditional mythological aspects. Once again, Marvel delivers a crowd-pleasing piece of rousing entertainment with a successful batting average we haven’t seen the likes of since Pixar’s glory days.

Garden State

Conceived as a semi-autobiographical labor of love by sitcom star Zach Braff, GardenState (2004) was a modestly-budgeted independent film that, thanks to word-of-mouth and Braff’s tireless self-promotion (in particular, on his blog where fans were able to interact with him), his directorial debut became something of a minor hit as twentysomethings connected with the film and its disaffected characters in a deeply personal way. It didn’t take long for the media backlash to arrive with Slate leading the charge with a rant bluntly entitled, “Why I Hate Zach Braff,” that reeked of jealous hipster envy. I have no doubt that Braff’s film is a sincere attempt on his part to articulate how he felt at a certain point in his life on celluloid. That kind of earnestness in this cynical age leaves one wide open for all sorts of crass criticism, but for those that connect with what he is trying to say, Garden State is a special film.

Andrew “Large” Largeman (Zach Braff) is an out-of-work actor living in Los Angeles and paying the bills as a waiter at a Vietnamese restaurant. He gets a phone call from his father (Ian Holm) telling that his mother has died. He heads back home to New Jersey where he hooks up with old friends, including Mark (Peter Sarsgaard), a gravedigger whose mom (Jean Smart) and her boyfriend Tim (a pre-The Big Bang Theory Jim Parsons) can speak fluent Klingon.

Large is disaffected and emotionally removed from the rest of the world thanks to a steady diet of mood suppressing pills prescribed by his psychiatrist father. In some respects, he resembles the equally disaffected Harold in Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude (1971). Large aimlessly wanders through life with no real purpose. Even when he hooks up with Mark and his friends, Large doesn’t really connect with them. He is the outside observer who watches everything. Of course, taking Ecstasy at their party probably didn’t help, either. Generally speaking, Large is shell-shocked by life, but this begins to change when he stops taking his medication and meets Samantha (Natalie Portman), an eccentric girl who is his complete opposite. While he is detached, she’s empathetic. He doesn’t talk much and she can’t stop talking. He is passive and she is very much pro-active — the Maude to his Harold, if you will.

It is the odd, personal little touches, like the sinks in the airport bathroom that go on as Large passes by each one of them, that are quirky and establish right from the get-go that this film is going to be something different. For example, when Large goes into a doctor’s office, he notices a wall absolutely covered with diplomas and degrees. So much so that there is one hanging from the ceiling. It is this example that also demonstrates Braff’s tendency to create moments that are a little too precious, like when he inserts a shot of Large’s shirt pattern blending into the wallpaper behind him for no discernible reason except that it’s supposed to visually illustrate his fucked-up mind state or something like that. However, they are thankfully few and far between and I’m willing to chalk this up to first-time directorial inexperience and an over-enthusiastic tendency to show off a little bit. As a first-time director, Braff wears his influences on his sleeve (see The Graduate), but he isn’t simply sampling them a la Quentin Tarantino. He’s integrating them into a personal story. Braff also sneaks in references to some of his previous work with a cameo by Michael Weston who appeared with him in the little-seen indie, Getting to Know You (1999).

With Garden State, Natalie Portman temporarily escaped from Star Wars hell to capitalize on the promise she showed in films like Beautiful Girls (1996) and Where the Heart Is (2000). She is completely engaging as the neurotic and chatty Sam. She seems to be channeling Diane Keaton circa Annie Hall (1977) or a young version of Ruth Gordon’s life-affirming Maude in Harold and Maude with her performance, displaying excellent comedic timing. Portman has such a radiant presence on camera and the film really comes alive whenever she’s on-screen. With Garden State, Portman also entered the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Hall of Fame. Upon closer inspection, Sam is a rather superficial character loaded with adorable, quirky affectations, but whose sole purpose is to help Large get out of existential funk and embrace life. That being said, Portman does her job really well. For all of Sam’s colorful affectations (she’s an epileptic compulsive liar), Portman is able to convey a vulnerability that is endearing.

What really saves Garden State from being too precious is the presence of Peter Sarsgaard who delivers another wonderfully low-key performance as Large’s laidback friend Mark. He makes his character’s quirks (like Mark’s investment in Desert Storm trading cards that he plans to sell one day for a lot of money) believable and grounds the film with his realistic portrayal of a guy stuck in a small-town, but who is self-aware of this fact and made peace with it. Sarsgaard brings an effortless charisma that is always interesting to watch. One moment, Mark is all easy going and then on a dime he insults his mother’s boyfriend in a casually cruel way. Mark shows these little glimpses of self-awareness throughout the film and they culminate in a fantastic throwaway line near the end of the movie that speaks volumes about his character.

Zach Braff, known mostly for his work on the goofy sitcom, Scrubs, shows his versatility and ambitious talents with Garden State (he also wrote it). Despite wearing many hats as it were, he still manages to deliver a layered performance that is thoughtful and heartfelt with a definite arc that reaches a satisfying conclusion by film’s end. Let’s face it; your enjoyment of this film will largely depend on your tolerance of Braff. He tones down his sitcom shtick to play a very different character. Large is internalized and emotionally numb from his medication that has him sleepwalking his way through life. Braff has excellent chemistry with Portman and together they make a believable couple, each with their own unique ailments, drawn to one another because they are both adrift in life.

While working as a waiter at the upscale restaurant Le Colonial in Beverly Hills and trying to make it as an actor, Zach Braff was depressed because his career had stalled. He was on the verge of moving back to New Jersey and wrote the screenplay for Garden State in 2000. For years, he had kept detailed notebooks consisting of stories he overheard from friends, personal experiences and local newspaper clippings. When it came to write the script, he integrated many of them into it. The film was originally called Large’s Ark because Braff always liked the story of Noah’s Ark and the notion of rescuing things that you really like and starting over, which he envisioned the film’s protagonist doing. He ended up changing the title to the more accessible Garden State when he realized that no one would get the original title’s meaning.

Initially, he couldn’t find anyone interesting in backing the project because the script didn’t conform to the traditional three-act structure. Braff finally got Jersey Films interested and from there he was able to go after the actors he wanted. He showed them the short films he had made in order to prove that he knew what he was doing. After meeting with the actors one-on-one they all agreed to do it. For the role of Sam, Braff had always wanted to cast someone like Natalie Portman and he finally wrote her a letter. She read it, they met for lunch and she agreed to do it. To break the ice, Braff and Peter Sarsgaard came to Portman’s university where they hung out and bonded. Portman remembers, “That’s a great way to start out because it breaks down all barriers and we kept that sort of mood on set.” To prepare for the film, Braff had her watch Harold and Maude and told her that he wanted Sam to be “a 21-year-old Ruth Gordon.”

Even with the cast in place, Braff found it hard to get financing because Garden State was a character-driven film and he was inexperienced director. All of the studios turned him down. When giving potential financiers the script, Braff also included a CD of music, populated by the likes of The Shins, Coldplay and Nick Drake that he envisioned as its soundtrack. When it came time to actually get permission to use this music, he found that each band wanted a lot of money. However, he wrote impassioned letters and approached each one with the scene where their music would be used. This technique paid off and Braff got them all to reduce their fees. Finally, Gary Gilbert, an independent financier who had made a fortune in the home-mortgage market, stepped up and agreed to provide the film’s budget, but only if Braff could get it down to $2.5 million. He was able to do this and ended up shooting Garden State around northern New Jersey over 25 days during the summer of 2003. The film had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival where Braff sold Garden State to Fox Searchlight and Miramax for a $5 million distribution deal.

Garden State received mostly positive reviews from mainstream critics. Roger Ebert gave it three out of four stars and wrote, “This is not a perfect movie; it meanders and ambles and makes puzzling detours. But it’s smart and unconventional, with a good eye for the perfect detail.” The Los Angeles Times’ Kevin Thomas wrote, “Once again Portman is a beguiling charmer, and the multifaceted Sarsgaard very nearly steals the movie. Garden State's lack of pretense makes it all the more rewarding.” USA Today gave the film three out of four stars and Claudia Puig wrote, “Like The Graduate, Garden State is by turns knowing and innocent, humorous and humanistic.” In his review for The New York Observer, Andrew Sarris wrote, “The happy ending is somewhat conventional in comparison to all the unusual experiences that have preceded it. Still, there’s no way any viewer could fail to be depressed if Andrew and Sam didn’t make it as a for-keeps couple.”

The Washington Post’s Desson Thomson called the film, “an edgy quasi-comedy, it's very funny in places, touching in others. There is a little unevenness. But for a directorial debut, it's amazingly assured.” However, in his review for The New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote, “But a scrupulous avoidance of any solemnity makes Garden State a bit too light for its own good. Its method of skipping from one incident to another feels scatterbrained, and promising characters are left behind in the rush.”

Garden State was initially given a limited release, but word-of-mouth, thanks in large part to Braff blogging anecdotes of making the film and interacting with people who left comments, helped expand its release. Fans traveled long distances for a chance to see it in a theater while many saw it more than once – a very unusual phenomenon in this day and age of short attention spans and expensive ticket prices. The people who loved the film really loved it and those who hated it, really hated it. Case in point: an article that surfaced on Slate two years after the film was released that not only attacked it, but Braff as well, calling him, “Hollywood’s ambassador to the nation’s cool kids—the guy who interprets youth culture for film execs and then repackages it for popular consumption.” The article instantly dates itself with sneering references to Braff’s popularity on MySpace and Garden State resembling an “overlong iPod ad with less adventuresome music choices.” The only thing that is useful about this “think piece” is that it provides a pop cultural snapshot of the Braff backlash that had reached its zenith.

Garden State is a film bursting with ideas, keen observations on life and memorable images, like when Large wakes up after a night of taking Ecstasy to see Tim in the next room getting milk for some cereal in a full-suit of knight’s armor, that make most other films look inert by comparison. The film takes us to unexpected places, like a family that lives in a boat located deep within a cavernous quarry mired in litigation. With Garden State, Braff tapped into a generation raised on the Internet and iPods and whose recreational drug of choice are prescription pills. He struck a chord with fellow twentysomethings who saw things in the film that they could relate to, that spoke to them on a personal level, which is rare for any film to be able to do, much less one made by a first-time director. Unfortunately, Braff has been unable to direct another film with several projects announced, but nothing made so far. His film career stalled after Garden State with a couple of romantic comedies that were poorly received. Hopefully, he’ll get another shot to make another personal film.

SOURCES

Blackwelder, Rob. “Braff in the Saddle.” SPLICEDwire. July 1, 2004.

Bunn, Austin. “Melancholy Baby.” New York magazine.

Hiatt, Brian. “Five Reasons Garden State Will Be A Sleeper Hit.” Entertainment Weekly. July 27, 2004.

Howard, Caroline. “Zach Braff.” People. July 28, 2004.

Levin, Josh. “Why I Hate Zach Braff.” Slate. September 22, 2006.

Lite, Jordan. “Garden Club.” New York Daily News. August 25, 2004.

“Q&A with Natalie Portman.” Phase 9.

“Q&A with Zach Braff.” Phase 9.

Stein, Joel. “Zach Braff Has A Big Laugh.” Time. July 18, 2004.

DVD of the Week: Black Swan

Let’s be honest, there aren’t many ballet-centric films out there and even fewer that are good, with notable exceptions like The Red Shoes (1948) and the underrated Robert Altman film The Company (2003). So Darren Aronofsky had his work cut out for him with Black Swan (2010), a ballet film reimagined as a psychological horror tale reminiscent of Roman Polanski’s early work. Aronofsky is a filmmaker that strives to make genres his own – edgy science fiction (Pi) and a gritty sports film (The Wrestler). He even incorporated aspects of the horror genre in his harrowing adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.’s Requiem for a Dream (2000). Black Swan tackles the genre head-on with the kind of intensity we’ve come to expect from the filmmaker.


In a bold move, Aronofsky cast Natalie Portman, an actress known mostly for appealing characters in films like Where the Heart Is (2000) and Garden State (2004), against type as an aspiring yet psychologically conflicted ballerina trying to land the part in a production of Swan Lake. However, the gamble paid off in a big way as she delivered a complex, powerful performance that garnered a multitude of awards, most notably the Oscar for Best Actress.

A New York ballet company’s lecherous director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) announces that his take on Swan Lake is going to be a stripped down and visceral affair. He’s looking for a fresh new face to play both the Black and White Swan, which doesn’t sit too well with veteran ballerina Beth MacIntyre (Winona Ryder) who is effectively pushed out, or “retired,” at the beginning of the film in order to make room for aspiring dancer Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman). She is eager to get the role but not only has to battle her own self-doubts but strong competition from rival dancer Lily (Mila Kunis), a newcomer from San Francisco who is everything Nina isn’t: confident and uninhibited. Nina has her technique down cold but she lacks Lily’s passion and the ability to lose herself in the role.

Early on, we see the cracks beginning to show in Nina’s façade. Near a subway stop she passes someone on the street that looks exactly like her. At home, she notices a strange, small rash on her back. Are these symptoms of stress or something else more sinister? As if she didn’t have enough pressure, her overbearing stage mother Erica (Barbara Hershey) treats her daughter like she’s still a little girl. This extends to the décor in Nina’s bedroom – awash in pink and populated with stuffed animals. When she’s not painting creepy portraits of her daughter, Erica tries to control every moment of Nina’s home life. However, Nina is able to escape her clutches once she starts hanging out with Lily. The rival dancer takes Nina for a walk on the wild side, giving her drugs and taking her clubbing, which loosens up her inhibitions and that’s only for starters.

Like he did with The Wrestler (2008), Aronofsky shows us the tricks of the trade, the minutia dancers do, like how they break in a new pair of dancing slippers or tape up their ankles and feet in preparation. He also shows the punishment Nina’s body takes from dancing – she is scarily thin, has busted toe nails, endures a seemingly endless number of rehearsals, and pushes herself to the point of exhaustion.

Initially, Natalie Portman plays the prim and proper character we’ve seen her do before but the actress soon reveals Nina to be a deeply flawed person gradually coming apart at the seams as she tries to cope with the pressure of taking on the lead role in a high profile production. Portman displays some serious acting chops as she brilliantly conveys the mental disintegration of her character. The actress gives all sorts of intriguing nuances that make us wonder just how much of what is happening to her is real or in her head. She commits herself to the role completely and this is particular evident in the climactic sequence where Nina finally performs Swan Lake in front of an audience on opening night.

As if casting Portman was a risk, in comes That ‘70s Show’s Mila Kunis. Now, she’s shown her “serious” acting chops in Max Payne (2008), but the jump from a supporting role in that film to a much more substantial supporting role in Black Swan is a quantum leap for the actress. Vincent Cassel plays a Svengali-like ballet director who pushes Nina by manipulating her emotions and playing on her insecurities about the Black Swan role. Winona Ryder has a juicy role as a disgruntled aging dancer on her way out. She has a memorable scene in which she confronts Nina in a boozy, vengeful haze. There is a delicious irony here as in real life Portman now gets the high profile leading roles that Ryder used to get in the 1990’s.

Black Swan is reminiscent of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965) and The Tenant (1976) in that they all depict a protagonist’s nightmarish descent into madness. Aronofsky’s film is a terrific showcase for Portman’s talents, challenging her like no other role before as she finally fulfills the promise showed very early on in her career with Leon: The Professional (1994). For Aronofsky, he only improves as a filmmaker, adding another self-destructive protagonist to his roster. He has arguably made his best film to date and it should be interesting to see what he does next.

Special Features:

“Black Swan Metamorphosis” is a three-part making of documentary about the film that can be viewed separately or altogether. There is all kinds of fascinating, fly-on-the-wall, on-set footage showing several scenes being shot. Various crew members talk about their respective roles in the production. This doc provides some insight on how they shot Black Swan on a small budget with little time. Natalie Portman talks about the rigorous training schedule she went through in order to pull off the dance sequences. This is quite a good look at various aspects of the production.

 

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.