Heat at 31: Two Men Who Understand Each Other Better Than Anyone at Home

Heat is a 1995 crime drama written and directed by Michael Mann, and it runs on one durable idea: two men who do the same job from opposite sides, and who understand each other better than anyone in their own homes. Al Pacino plays LAPD Robbery Homicide Lieutenant Vincent Hanna. Robert De Niro plays Neil McCauley, a career thief. Warner Bros. released the film in the United States on December 15, 1995. It grossed $187.4 million worldwide and drew critical acclaim for Mann’s direction and for both leads.

Trailer, via Warner Bros. Rewind.

The Armored Car Robbery

Heat opens with McCauley’s crew taking $1.6 million in bearer bonds from an armored car. The crew is Chris Shiherlis, Michael Cheritto, Gilbert Trejo and a new recruit named Waingro. Waingro kills a guard without provocation. That forces the others to kill two more guards to get clear. McCauley plans to kill Waingro in retribution. Waingro escapes.

That opening is the whole machine in miniature. One man breaks the plan. Everyone else pays for it. Mann never lets the crew’s competence turn into glamour. They are good at this, and the job still goes wrong because of a stranger in the room.

The Coffee on the 105 Freeway

The promotion for Heat centered heavily on its two stars. It was the first time De Niro and Pacino appeared on screen together, after both were in The Godfather Part II in 1974 without sharing a scene. De Niro was the first cast member to get the script. He showed it to Pacino, who wanted in. De Niro said Heat was “a very good story, had a particular feel to it, a reality and authenticity.”

The film earns that meeting. Hanna stops McCauley on the 105 Freeway and invites him to coffee. They talk about their dedication to the job and what it costs them. Hanna describes his failing marriage. The scene works because neither man is selling anything. Mann wrote it as two professionals comparing notes.

Pacino revealed in 2016 that he viewed his character as having been under the influence of cocaine throughout the film. Watch the performance with that in mind and it holds together. The volume, the restlessness, the way Hanna cannot sit still in his own life.

Justine, Eady, and the Cost of the Job

Hanna is a dedicated lawman and a former Marine. He is on his third marriage, to Justine, played by Diane Venora. He struggles to connect with his stepdaughter, Lauren. McCauley lives alone and starts a relationship with Eady, a graphic designer new to Los Angeles with no local connections. Amy Brenneman plays her.

The two home lives rhyme without ever touching. Hanna has people and cannot reach them. McCauley has no one and chooses to let one person in. Mann does not argue that one arrangement is better. He shows what each man gave up to be good at this.

Val Kilmer plays Chris Shiherlis, with Ashley Judd as his wife Charlene. Tom Sizemore is Cheritto. Jon Voight is Nate, McCauley’s fence. The supporting cast is deep and none of it is decoration. Mykelti Williamson, Wes Studi, Ted Levine and Dennis Haysbert all get real work.

Van Zant and the Aborted Depository Job

Nate suggests selling the stolen bonds back to their original owner, money launderer Roger Van Zant. Van Zant pretends to agree and arranges an ambush instead. McCauley anticipates the trap, counter-ambushes the hitmen and kills them. Then he threatens to kill Van Zant.

An informant connects Cheritto to the robbery. Hanna’s team starts monitoring him, identifies the rest of the crew and finds their next target: a precious metals depository. The team stakes out the depository. The crew breaks in. A careless officer makes a noise. McCauley aborts the heist. Hanna cannot prove the crew stole anything and reluctantly lets them walk.

That sequence is the film’s best argument for itself. Nobody wins. The cop loses a collar. The thief loses a score. Both men walk away knowing the other one is exactly as good as advertised.

Folsom Prison and the Casting

Mann wrote the original script in 1979, basing it on Chicago police officer Chuck Adamson’s pursuit of a criminal named Neil McCauley, after whom De Niro’s character is named. The script first became the 1989 television film L.A. Takedown after a pilot did not get a series order. Mann revisited it in 1994 and made the feature with co-producer Art Linson.

The research shows. Mann took Kilmer, Sizemore and De Niro to Folsom State Prison to interview actual career criminals. Ashley Judd met former prostitutes who had become housewives while preparing for Charlene. Keanu Reeves was offered the role of Chris Shiherlis and turned it down to play Hamlet at the Manitoba Theatre Centre. Val Kilmer got the part. Jon Bon Jovi auditioned. Xander Berkeley was considered to reprise Waingro from L.A. Takedown, but a commitment to Barb Wire created a scheduling conflict. He still appears as a different character and is the only actor in both versions.

At 170 minutes, Heat is long, and the length is not always earned. The middle stretch spends real time on police procedure and on the depository stakeout, and the film’s patience there is a choice a viewer can respect without enjoying. The personal material around Justine and Lauren is thinner than the professional material. Hanna’s marriage is a problem the film states more than it dramatizes.

Here is how the film’s key sequences rank, as this paper reads them:

1. The coffee scene between Pacino and De Niro. It is the reason the film is remembered, and the one scene the film could least afford to lose.
2. The armored car robbery. It sets the rules and introduces Waingro, the mistake that drives everything.
3. The counter-ambush against Van Zant’s hitmen. It shows McCauley thinking two moves ahead.
4. The aborted depository job. It proves the two men are equals and gives Hanna nothing to show for it.
5. The domestic material. It is the film’s weakest thread and its longest.

Two Men Who Respect Each Other

Heat is considered to be one of the best and most influential crime films of all time, and on this paper’s reading it holds up. Mann’s direction is controlled and unsentimental. He shoots Los Angeles as a working city, not a postcard. The two leads are the draw and they deliver. Pacino’s Hanna reads to me as a man running hot on a job that rewards patience. De Niro’s McCauley is the opposite, and the film’s smartest move is refusing to say which approach is correct.

The film is not flawless. It is too long, and its emotional subplots do less work than its procedural ones. But the core holds. A thief and a cop who respect each other, a job that goes wrong because of one man’s impulse, and a coffee meeting that neither of them needed to take.

The tagline calls Heat “A Los Angeles crime saga.” That is accurate, and slightly modest. It is a film about work, and about the bill that comes due for being good at it.

Al Pacino · crime films · Heat 1995 · Michael Mann · movie review · Robert De Niro