Best deconstruction of this crap I've ever seen
Came across this written review by a guy on the general discussion board of a fitness website.
This is an epic takedown in the same league as Mr Plinkett and the prequels.
Actually, from a character, story-telling and acting point of view, Heat is arguably one of the worst and most over-rated Hollywood film in the past 30 years so when compared to the rave reviews and praise it gets.share
I know I'm going to catch a lot of flack but it's late and I'm bored so here it goes:
Michael Mann seems to be totally incapable of directing actors. All the films of his I've watched, including this one, seem to consist of people over or udner-acting and seemingly neverending panning of the camera in 360 degrees establishing shots. The guy's style would be far more suited for music videos.
He managed to get Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, arguaby two of the greatest actors of all time and what kind of perfromances does he get out of them?
Pacino seems to be chewing the scenery and screaming every chance he gets as if this is the only way to portray emotion and the character's frustration.
De Niro on the other hand, who's playing a brooding and composed career-criminal seems to be totally asleep in every scene he isn't waving a gun around.
The characters are hideously flat and uninteresting and the only reason we care about them is because they are Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. If you had TV actors from a show like Law and Order or Hawaii-Five 0, no one would give a toss.
The entire attempt to portray the film as having antagonists who are anti-heros rather than villains just doesn't work. The cops are written so stereotypically awful in the typical 90's fashion (walking around with dark sunglasses, barking orders at other cops and intimidating witnesses and petty criminals), that you don't care or root for them.
You 'd think that this would make it easier to sympathise with the criminal gang, but lo and behold, even they aren't interesting enough either. You have Val Kilmer come off as some petulant child with a gambling problem, which we never see have any real effect on in his character other than to establish he's a risk taker, as if being a career-criminal wasn't already indicative of that, and then De Niro just looks bored and in search of some thing to do. The rest of the gang, Danny Trejo, Tom Sizemore and Jon Voight barely have a character at all, they 're just there to provide dialogue and plot-point exposition.
The complete comedy of how bad horribly written these characters are comes from the film's only real villain, Waingro (or whatever the hell he name is) and he's so utterly cliched and stereotypically evil they might as well have named him Bad Guy or Mr Evil.
Basically the guy's only purpose is to make all the other characters more sympathetic because so far, our 2 leads are boring as hell and a wlaking stereotype, our 3rd guy, Val Kilmer, is in the film just so why can have the wife betrayal, a pointless side-plot seeing as how they could have had any number of criminals fill that part, and a gang of forgetable police shoot-out fodder.
Let me lay down this beat, see if you can pick it up:
Al pacino isn't really likeable. He's a sad, tired old bastard who's wife and step-child are more trouble than they 're worth to him. By the end of the film all he's got is his job and he's not intersting enough with that a lone.
De Niro is sort of relatable in the sense that he's a bit of a social recluse and given the setting of the large city, bright lights theme most of us can related to the isolation his character feels, but that still doesn't cut it as he's a bad guy, no question.
He orders the execution of some poor bastards that just doing their job as armoured guards, he terrorizes and threatens a wife to stay with her abusive husband (oh but that's ok because he offers to pay her way if he screws up again, as if somehow this is HIS decision to make) and he robs banks...
Basically he's a loner with no qualms about killing innocent people to save his hide. But we are meant to over-look all this because he decides to get vengeance for the death of his friend and betrayal of Wayngro... That's like sympathising with a murderer over him being raped.
And this is where I trully draw the line and call this film bloody awful. So Waingro's a real sob sure, but what did he do so different? He killed the guards in cold blood, just like de Niro ordered the others to do later. You coudl argue he did it out of pleasure and De Niro out of necessity but that's a bullsh!t excuse in my eyes. De Niro willingly put himself in that situation by robbing the armoured car, so tough sh!t mate, you 're not a good guy in any way, shape or form.
But wait a minute, how do we possibly care for ANYONE at this point? They 're all either boring as f@ck, or asholes! Why should we care?
Because Waingros turns out to be a child-molesting, serial-killer Nazi... Yes people, you read this right. The main characters in Heat are so HORRIBLY written and uninteresting, they ONLY way the writer can get us to care for them and become even slightly emotionally involved in the plot is if they throw in a child-molesting, serial-killing Nazi into the mix to suck up all the possible hate and leave nothing but positive feelings for the rest seeing how compared to Hitler, most people come off better.
This is such a lazy and juvenile way to write a story, not to mention insulting to the viewer, as it tricks you into thinking the characters are worth caring for and even insults your intelligence by thinking this schlock actually works (which it did apparently, and beautifully so as well...).
Anyway, long story short, boring murdering ashole kills Nazi so suddnely he's good guy, even though he did it for completely selfish reasons and not out of principle, and that means we automatically ought to care if he gets away or if walking 90's cop stereotype gets his guy. Utter crap.
Furthermore, the there's a few more points I want to make about how plainly stupid the characters act when the writer needs to add tension and create a shamble of a plot for us to have to sit through.
1)De Niro and his gang are somehow this elit gang of robbers yet don't think to inquire deeper into the new addition mere moments before going on a heist.
Hey morons, ever think to simply cancel the job if you couldn't find a guy in enough time to check him out for something as trivial as being a complete psycho and loose canon? Elit gang of criminal robbers my ****, these guys are amateur clowns.
2) so Waingor goes off the deep end and kills a guard in cold blood, necessitating the execution of the rest of the guards, something De Niro is mad about and plans to kill Waingro for.
So what does this criminal genius do?
Does he pretend nothing's wrong and kill him when he least expects it?
Does he fake a robbery and take him out and portray his death as yet another crime statistic in the big city?
Of course not. He gets his ENTIRE gang that was in on the job to meet in a public diner, have them act all suspicious around Waingro by giving him the silent treatment and then like a complete f@cking moron like he is, De Niro slams the guy's face on the table, for THE ENTIRE F1CKING DINER TO SEE HIM, THE ASSUALT AND ALL OF THEIR FACES, and then proceeds to man-handle him out to the parking lot, IN BROAD DAYLIGHT , IN PUBLIC, AFTER ASSAULTING HIM, and attepts to assisinate him BY GUNSHOT... And of course, suprise surprise, someone distracts them momentarily and Waingro turns into Hudini and disappares into thin air...
What a bunch of f@cking *beep*
3) and lastly, the biggest single insult to humanity ever commited to film:
HOW THE F@CK DOES VAL KILMER GET AWAY AT THE END?????????
This guy killed cops in a shoot-out not 36 hours ago, the entire f@cking police department of Los Anglese and probably every law-enforcemnt officer in the state (FBI, Sheriff's Departments, Airport Security, Traffic Wardens, even the f@cking mall security guards are probably on alert!) and despite being the target of a state wide manhunt for COP KILLING, a crime punsihable by the DEATH SENTENCE in California, he manages to get away from the very police road block set up specifically to catch him outside his own safe-house simply by cutting his pony-tail and showing a fake ID...
F@CKING ASSSSSSS!!!! Jesus Christ that so f@cking stupid! Is this film REALLY telling us that the guy who looks exactly like the guy accussed of being a cop killer can simply roll by a police road block specifically set up to catch him with by simply flashing a fake ID and driving a car that wasn't stolen???
Ate these people BLIND?! You have his MUGSHOT!!! IT'S HIM!!! LOOK AT THE PHOTOS! IT'S THE SAME GUY!!!
Good god this movie's so f@cking stupid... Basically all Bin Laden had to do was get himself a fake ID and he could have lived out his days as a hot-dog vendor outside the CIA headquarters in Langley... Brilliant.