Link to the thread on Michael Mann

I can't believe there isn't a thread on this already. I fully expect to be ahem'ed but here goes anyway. All the Dark Knight/ Heat comparisons got me thinking about this so I went back and watched it again. Someone has actually edited the Dark Knight trailer using footage from Heat and posted it on You Tube.



Michael Mann is easily my favorite director and Heat is a easily one of the great crime films. I'll admit it's not perfect. Some of the plot points are a little too convenient. For example, Deniro learns he needs a new getaway driver and just happens to run into a former cellmate (Denis Haysbert) in the diner immediately after that.

Mann gets a bad rap as either an empty stylist or an obsessive Kubrick type but I think the sit down in the coffee shop between Pacino and Deniro shows that Mann is actually more concerned with character than many give him credit for. If you listen to his audio commentaries, he rarely mentions the cool music or the camera moves. He spends most of his time talking about the characters and what makes them tick.

The obvious choice in the coffee scene would have been to just let Pacino and Deniro get into a shouting match (ala, Denzel and Gene Hackman in Crimson Tide) but Mann doesn't give us that. Yes, Pacino/ Vincent Hannah is loud and over the top in the other scenes, but he treats the other criminals that way mostly because he has no respect for them. He has too much respect for Deniro/ McCauley's professionalism to talk to him that way. They spend the first half of the film admiring each other's work and when they finally meet they show mutual respect and sit down for coffee "like a couple of regular guys". If that weren't enough, Cinematographer Dante Spinoti's camera frames them the same from opposite sides because they are equals. Unfortunately this caused the rumor that Pacino and Deniro weren't actually sitting across from each other when they filmed the scene. But there are production stills that prove they were actually together.

Re-watching this yesterday I noticed for the first time that Heat, Manhunter, and Miami Vice all include the line "Time is luck.". In Heat, Deniro/ McCauley says it. I'm not sure though if this is Mann's worldview or if he's just drawn to characters who believe it. Or maybe he just thinks it's a cool existential sounding line. What do you think?

I'm a fan of Mann, and I do think this is a great movie. It runs a bit too long for me, but I appreciate so much else about it. (If anything, I like how Mann DOES show how vicious and brutral gunfights really are. And LOUD!)

I know alot of people love the final shootout in Miami Vice, but even that does not top what Mann accomplished in Heat. On the DVD they explain that they tried to add the gunshots in post production for the bank robbery but Mann knew that it did not sound right. There was no way to reproduce what the gunshots sounded like bouncing off the skyscrapers so most of what you hear is the actual recording of the gunshots when it was filmed. Also, don't forget this was actually before the real life LA bank robbery in 97 when suspects armed with rifles and body armor shot it out with the LAPD.