At the most basic level, Heat deserves its place on a “Crime and Punishment” list as a cop and robber heist film, told through a riveting cat-and-mouse chase by director Michael Mann. On a much more fascinating level, the importance of its inclusion here reflects a broader punishment for one crime than on just the perpetrator. Famously the first time Al Pacino and Robert De Niro shared the screen, despite having acted in the two different timelines of The Godfather Part II twenty-one years earlier, the obsessive cop and skilled thief are every bit each other’s match, and the similarity of these two men in seemingly opposite professions forms the driving punishment of the opening crime.
De Niro’s thief tells his girlfriend that he’ll walk away from anyone and anything the moment he feels the heat, and Pacino provides that heat, but whether he does walk away, and whether Pacino’s cop can recognize the same pressure in his own life shows one crime permeating a society. The estranged marriage between the cop and his third wife is introduced immediately after we meet De Niro’s robber executing a successful heist. The cross-cutting in the finale between the toxic work and life relationship draws the tragedy not just of any crime home, but also of making crime and doling out punishment the focus of one’s life. — Evan Cogswell (2024)
Arts & Faith Lists:
2024 Top 25 Crime and Punishment Films — #15