![]() ![]() Kilmer was at the height of his fame in 1995, having just starred as the Dark Knight in Batman Forever and was just cast in the 1997 action pic The Saint. In addition to Pacino and De Niro, Heat also starred Val Kilmer as bank robber Chris Shiherlis. It’s not too much of a stretch to claim that everyone in Hollywood was cast in Heat, but it sure seems like it. Heat’s cast includes some of Hollywood’s finest actors Everyone in the large cast is given a chance to shine, yet Mann always keeps the focus on the driving force of the narrative: the final heist, and the key players who are involved in pulling it off or stopping it from happening. There’s a lot going on for instance, I didn’t even mention the serial killer subplot! But Heat never feels overstuffed, nor do any of its stories feel underdeveloped. There’s Neil’s tender flirtation with Eady, a lonely graphic designer he meets at a bookstore Vincent’s crumbling marriage to Justine, who is angry for being passed over for Vincent’s obsession with his job Vincent’s stepdaughter Lauren, who is quietly sinking under a wave of teenage depression and Chris, Neil’s closest partner who has a tempestuous marriage to Charlene. ![]() ![]() That’s Heat‘s story in a nutshell, but the genius of the movie is how it also contains a multitude of side stories that are delicately interwoven within the movie’s overall robbery plotline. Hot on their tail is Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino, in peak Pacino form), a former Marine and LAPD cop who methodically pieces together McCauley’s plan and tries to stop him. ![]() After a botched robbery that leaves multiple bank guards dead, McCauley and his crew decide to pull off one last score: robbing $12.2 million from a bank in downtown L.A. Neil McCauley, played by Robert De Niro in one of his last truly great roles as a leading man, is a career thief based in Los Angeles. Heat‘s plot can be boiled down to this: it’s a cops and robbers movie, but told in detail, with attention paid to character development, tension, and realism. Heat has a great story that is both simple and sprawling ![]()
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