Movie review: ‘Heat’

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It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes a film can pair two of the day’s biggest stars without shortchanging one or the other or both. Take for example the violent crime drama “Heat.” You’ll find enough celluloid landscape at nearly three hours for both Robert De Niro and Al Pacino to flex all of their acting muscles. “Heat” is far from a perfect film, but down into the supporting cast you’ll be hard-pressed to find many that will grade out better. “Heat” is from director Michael Mann and while he’s known as much for the style of his productions such as TV’s “Miami Vice,” you’ll find this one has just as much substance as style – and that was what needed to be with this A-list cast.

‘Heat’
(1995; 170 minutes; rated R; directed by Michael Mann and starring Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer and Ashley Judd)

GIVING HEAT AND TAKING IT

(NOTE: I expanded this review with additional opinion and trivia and the updating of links on Sept. 3, 2018. I again expanded this review on March 15, 2025. I again updated the review on April 2, 2025, to note the death of Val Kilmer.)

Using nearly three hours of screen time, director Michael Mann made sure he got every second of energy possible from working with two of Hollywood’s biggest stars in his 1995 crime epic “Heat.” After all, shouldn’t everyone enjoy Al Pacino and Robert De Niro playing off one another and having an extended scene together?

Big stars do not always share screen time together or share it well, but Mann manages a good job here with Pacino and De Niro. Eleven years later, Martin Scorsese would accomplish the same in “The Departed” (click here for my review) by bringing opponents Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon together for an explosive scene – although the violence in “Heat” would come after the headliners’ initial face-off of just talking at a coffee shop.

The plot of “Heat” is straightforward (a group of ultra-professional crooks have a couple of “jobs” planned before quitting and the cops must stop them), but an excellent screenplay by Mann and wonderful work by the supporting cast make sure this one has layer after layer of detail, emotion and tension.

The film starts off with an excessively violent and bloody armored car robbery that sets the cops off after the crew of crooks because a new member of the crew is blamed for the slaughter. After, when they try to kill him, he escapes and ultimately proves to be everyone’s downfall.

Robert De Niro plays “Neil McCauley,” who is a career criminal and is the mastermind behind the crew. De Niro plays it calm, cool and collected here (much as he did his character in Scorsese’s “Casino” from the same year), but the veneer of his discipline begins to show when he becomes involved with Amy Brenneman, who plays “Eady.” Although tempted and makes a personal concession, De Niro never wavers from his course of devotion to the job and to revenge.

Still, the signature scene of “Heat” is the coffee shop chat between De Niro and Pacino, who plays “Lt. Vincent Hanna.” The two square off amicably on the surface, but both crackle with potential tension during the conversation in which each makes clear a deadly intention to continuing to do what each does.

De Niro and Pacino were in “The Godfather: Part II” but never appeared together (De Niro was the young “Vito Corleone” and Pacino his son “Michael” later in life). De Niro won an Oscar for his role and Pacino was nominated. De Niro has won two Oscars and nominated five other times, while Pacino won one (“Scent of a Woman,” but I thought Denzel Washington was better in “Malcolm X”) and was nominated seven other times. The other time they were paired was in the tepid “Righteous Kill” from 2008 and it’s a shadow of Mann’s work with “Heat.”

For his part, Pacino (the slight notch-above De Niro as headliner here) is the more volatile of the two and he sometimes bounces with energy and while never hangdog, he does have a deep-seeded tiredness about his life that he cannot escape. You expect and get so much from Pacino in each film that you cannot say he gives a performance of a lifetime, but he’s just so good that efforts like this by him are better than most efforts by others on their best day.

Pacino, like De Niro, has such a stellar career that it would take too much space to list them all, but he was in a couple you might have forgotten: “Panic in Needle Park” and a spectacularly poor effort as a Formula One driver in “Bobby Deerfield” (click here to read my review). As for De Niro, he was solid in “Midnight Run” with Charles Grodin (click here to read my review) and had opposite kind of characters in the more recent “Dirty Grandpa” (click here to read my review) and “The Intern” (click here to read my review).

The pair of actors who didn’t get enough screen time are Val Kilmer, who plays “Chris Shiherlis,” and Ashley Judd as his wife, “Charlene.” Both are excellent in each role: He as the volatile, compulsive gambler who needs Judd but does everything to push her away and her as the straight-talking wife who wants out but at the end of the day still loves him. It’s too bad a sequel pairing these two actors and their characters couldn’t have been made.

So, here’s a closer look at some of those below the headliners:

  • Kilmer, who has a reputation as a temperamental actor, needed more room for his intensity, so you don’t get the full dose of Kilmer such as in “The Doors” or the superior but forgotten “Willow” from Ron Howard or his chilly personality as “Iceman” in “Top Gun.” He’s completely different in “Heat” as he was he the college student in “Real Genius” (click here to read my review) or in his first movie role as the star of the spy movie spoof “Top Secret!” (click here to read my review). Kilmer was back in 2022 reprising his character “Tom ‘Iceman’ Kazansky” in “Top Gun: Maverick” with Tom Cruise. Kilmer died April 1,  2025, of pneumonia at 65.
  • A two-time nominee for Golden Globes (not for this one) and a two-time nominee for Primetime Emmys, Judd, in the year after “Heat,” played the wife of another bad guy in “Normal Life,” but it was much darker character that was more involved in crime in that one. Here, Judd is her strong and confident self while allowing her loyalty to Kilmer to win out in the end. She has also done “Double Jeopardy,” “Kiss the Girls” and “Divergent.” Her nominations were for “De-Lovely” (Globe), the TV series “Missing” (Emmy) and “Norma Jean & Marilyn” (both a Globe and an Emmy).

Rounding out the best at the top of the supporting cast are Golden Globe nominee (not for this one) Tom Sizemore, who plays the third crew member “Michael Cherritto,” and Oscar winner and three-time nominee (not for this one) Jon Voight as “Nate,” who is the fence who also gathers intelligence for De Niro and his less-than-merry band.

  • Sizemore, who would give a career-best performance in “Saving Private Ryan,” is the strong, mostly silent type here (although he wishes he didn’t call strangers “Slick”) and is loyal to the end to DeNiro. I liked Sizemore best in the little-recognized comedy “Big Trouble” (click here to read my review). Sizemore’s characters were as varied as his personal life was an ongoing controversy involving drugs and violence. Still, he was prolific in a career spanning five decades, with 242 acting credits through 2024 after the first in 1989. He was nominated for TV’s “Witness Protection.” Sadly, Sizemore died at 61 of a brain aneurysm in 2023 (remember, actors’ work can be released a year or even more after their death – and Sizemore had 18 upcoming in March 2025).
  • Voight uses his considerable talent to be the shadowy figure that helps De Niro in his life of crime. However, despite his obvious talent, I’ve never been much of a fan of him. He too often over plays a role, but not here. He’s spot-on as “Nate.” Voight has also been in “The Odessa File” (click here to read my review) as well as having won his statue for “Coming Home” and had a high profile role in “Deliverance.” His nominations were for “Ali,” “Runaway Train” and of course was “Joe Buck” in the iconic “Midnight Cowboy.”
  • Ted Levine plays “Det. Mike Bosko” and you’ll instantly recognize his gravelly voice. In my favorite work by him, Levine was the longsuffering “Lt. Leland Stottlemeyer” on TV’s “Monk.” I’m sure you don’t remember, but he was also the serial killer “Jame Gumb” in “The Silence of the Lambs” (click here to read my review). He played a doomed right-wing psycho in 1988’s little-remembered but excellent “Betrayed” with Debra Winger and Tom Berenger (click here to read my review).
  • Both Bud Cort, in an uncredited role as sleazy, conniving restaurant manager “Solenko,” and Natalie Portman, in only her second film as Pacino’s stepdaughter “Lauren Gustafson,” have minor roles but do notable work with what they’re given, especially Portman whose character is troubled here and attempts suicide. Cort is best remembered for “Harold and Maude” and Portman’s career has skyrocketed to include “V for Vendetta” (click here to read my review) and she won an Oscar for “Black Swan” and has nominations for “Jackie” and “Closer.”

There are other good supporting work including those by Danny Trejo, Jeremy Piven, Tone Loc and Dennis Hasbert, but, frankly, I just don’t want to review their work on this one.

Mann is most famous for the stylish and now iconic “Miami Vice” TV show (he also directed the big-screen version in 2006) and is noted for his splashy visual style. Mann is also the director who introduced “Dr. Hannibal Lecter” to movie audiences in “Manhunter” (click here to read my review) – although he did have the character’s name misspelled as “Lecktor” for some unknown reason – before “The Silence of the Lambs.” Mann also directed the simply terrific TV film “The Jericho Mile” (click here to read my review).

“Heat” was the 25th ranked film at the U.S. box office in 1995 with $67.4 million, according to Box Office Mojo. Even better, it ultimately made a worldwide total of $187.4 million on its budget of $60 million, according to Wiki. It’s difficult to believe that films such as the snifflebags “Mr. Holland’s Opus” and “The Bridges of Madison County” did better. Ah, well. There’s no accounting for filmgoers’ taste. The No. 1 film of the year was “Toy Story” with $191.7 million. Here are the films from 1995 that I’ve reviewed for my blog:

Assorted cast and film notes (via IMDb.com):

  • Pacino’s full birth name is Alfredo James Pacino and his nickname is “Sonny;” De Niro’s nickname is “Bobby Milk;” Judd’s birth name is Ashley Tyler Ciminella; Portman’s birth name is Natalie Hershlag; and Cort’s birth name is Walter Edward Cox.
  • Pacino is 5-foot-6; De Niro is 5-foot-9½; Kilmer is 5-foot-11¾; Voight is 6-foot-2½; Sizemore was 5-foot-11; Levine is 5-foot-11; and Cort is 5-foot-9. I put in actors’ heights because of the action in the film and Hollywood often putting micro-men in the lead (say those around 5-foot-5).
  • The pivotal coffee shop scene with De Niro and Pacino was not rehearsed. Pacino reportedly believed that it needed to be shot without rehearsal for verisimilitude. Mann reportedly agreed.
  • “Heat” was filmed on location at 65 spots around Los Angeles and no soundstage was used.
  • Keanu Reeves turned down the role ultimately given to Kilmer. Also, Johnny Depp was considered for the character, but his price was too high.
  • Directly from IMDb.com: “Many viewers claim that Robert De Niro and Al Pacino never (or hardly ever) actually share screentime during the film, despite the hype surrounding the film’s release, as showcasing their first screen appearance. In most pan-and-scan versions of the film, and television broadcasts, it does appear that during the “diner scene” the two never actually share the screen, but viewing the film in correct letterbox format, as Michael Mann intended, clearly shows the two actors sitting at the table, though only in wide shots.”
  • Voight initially turned Mann down when asked to be in film, but accepted when the director told him that he always wanted to work with him.
  • Tom Noonan was the serial killer in Mann’s “Manhunter” (he was “Francis Dollarhyde,” another Mann misspelling of the name from the original source – which was “Francis Dolarhyde”). He plays “Kelso” here in a forgettable performance.
  • Finally and directly from IMDb.com: “The meeting between Robert De Niro and Al Pacino over coffee was shot at Kate Mantilini on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. The Los Angeles mainstay was a noted top spot for a stylish late supper. The restaurant had ‘heat’ spelled in neon above the door and a large poster of the actors in the now famous scene. Diners could request the very table featured in the scene, table #71, which wait staff were familiar with as ‘The Table,’ and were happy to seat De Niro and Pacino fans at their famous meeting place. The restaurant closed in late 2014.”

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