Heat
Heat, American crime film, released in 1995, that was written and directed by Michael Mann. The film is loosely based on the criminal career and takedown of real-life thief Neil McCauley and is considered to be one of the greatest crime films of all time.
The story begins with the robbing of an armored car by Neil McCauley (Robert DeNiro) and his gang: Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer), Michael Cheritto (Tom Sizemore), Gilbert Trejo (Danny Trejo), and new hire Waingro (Kevin Gage). Waingro unnecessarily murders one of the car’s guards, leading the crew to kill the other guards as well. The deaths increase the “heat” (police attention) that the crew receive from the job—in the form of Lieut. Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) of the Los Angeles Police Department, who is quick to find their trail. Nevertheless, McCauley’s team moves forward with an even more audacious robbery of a bank.
The film’s primary theme is the inability of both the thieves and their pursuers to forge healthy personal relationships. Hanna is good at hunting criminals but consequently lacks the time and energy to connect with his (third) wife, Justine (Diane Venora). A lack of attention from the men in her life also has devastating results for his stepdaughter Lauren (Natalie Portman). Meanwhile, McCauley falls in love with a graphic designer named Eady (Amy Brenneman), but his criminal actions make a happy ending for them impossible. The other thieves also have women in their lives who are shown to be affected by their risk-taking, among them Shiherlis’s wife, Charlene (Ashley Judd), and Cheritto’s wife, Elaine (Susan Traylor).
“Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.” — Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro), in Heat (1995)
Heat has its origins in a true story: Chicago policeman Chuck Adamson hunted down a group of robbers led by real-life McCauley in 1964. After retiring from police work and relocating to Los Angeles, Adamson met Mann and told him about the case. Mann asked for permission to base a screenplay on the story and wrote the first draft of Heat in 1979.
Many authentic details of Adamson’s case were included in Mann’s script and the film he ultimately made from it. McCauley’s real-life targets did include a producer of diamond drill bits and an armored car. The robber also once foiled a sting operation by abandoning a nighttime robbery in the middle of its execution. Perhaps most unbelievably, Adamson and the true McCauley really did once meet in a restaurant and trade threats, which became the basis for one of the film’s most famous scenes.
Heat had a lengthy journey to the big screen. In the late 1980s Mann cut much of his script’s content in order to turn it into the pilot for a television show on NBC. When the network turned the series down over casting issues, the pilot was reworked into a standalone movie called L.A. Takedown, which aired on NBC in 1989.
After the success of The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Mann finally had the clout to push for a version of Heat equal to his vision. The willingness of DeNiro and Pacino to star in the film cemented the interest of the movie studio Warner Brothers in making the film; the two stars were both famous for their roles in crime movies and had even appeared in one together (The Godfather: Part II [1974]), but they had never before shared a scene, as Heat would have them do. The opportunity to see Pacino and DeNiro interact, alone, was enough to generate viewer interest.
The film was shot over 107 days in 1995 on a $60 million budget and released on December 15 that same year. It grossed $8.4 million in its opening weekend, coming in third behind the more family-friendly films Toy Story and Jumanji. The movie ultimately did $67.4 million worth of business domestically and almost $120 million internationally, making it a commercial success, though not a blockbuster.
Critics largely appreciated the film. Famed movie critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called the characters’ dialogue “eloquent, insightful, fanciful, poetic.” In following decades, it would be included in many lists of movies considered to be the best of the crime genre, and even in some lists of films said to be the best of the 1990s. Other filmmakers, including popular director Christopher Nolan, would cite Heat as an influence on their work.
In 2022 publisher William Morrow released Heat 2, a novel written by Mann and American thriller writer Meg Gardiner. The book is both a prequel and a sequel, including scenes set in 1988, 1996, and, eventually, 2000.
Production notes and credits
- Studio: Warner Brothers
- Director: Michael Mann
- Writer: Michael Mann
- Music: Elliot Goldenthal
- Cinematographer: Dante Spinotti
Cast
- Al Pacino (Lieut. Vincent Hanna)
- Robert De Niro (Neil McCauley)
- Val Kilmer (Chris Shiherlis)
- Jon Voight (Nate)
- Tom Sizemore (Michael Cheritto)
- Diana Venora (Justine)
- Amy Brenneman (Eady)
- Ashley Judd (Charlene Shiherlis)