Watching The Detectives: (Dir. Michael Mann, 2h50m, 1995)

The 1990s brought a resurgence to the detective, and the crime genre in general; this is not to say the 1970s and 80s are devoid of the genre; the former seeing an increase of gritty realistic pictures like Chinatown and Dirty Harry, the latter an increasing focus on stylistic or buddy-cop driven pictures like Beverly Hills Cop, Lethal Weapon and TV outings like Miami Vice. It's best, perhaps, to consider the 90s as a blend of style and substance, but films such as The Silence Of The Lambs (1991) Seven (1995), and even the neo-noir, L.A. Confidential (1997) feel like a successful synthesis of the detective films of the preceding two decades.

No film exemplifies this like Heat, Michael Mann's 1995 career criminal (Robert De Niro) against career cop (Al Pacino) in a high tension, visually slick, cat-and-mouse game that cuts to the heart of the genre's relationship with the lives of the men in it. Whilst this is the first time Mann's work has graced this column, Michael Mann should need little introduction. Heat is typical of his filmography, much of his work including Thief (1981), Manhunter (1986), the first adaption of Thomas Harris' Hannibal, and his later work, such as Public Enemies (2009) and Blackhat (2015) focusing on criminals, their inner lives, and their conflict with other criminals and the ever-present threat of the law.

Heat is no different; the film rests upon its central duo, each representing one half of this diochotome o the American criminal and justice system. Both of them are enmeshed in a lifestyle that they cannot leave. Pacino, Detective Hanna's marriage is falling apart as he hunts criminals such as De Niro's thief, McCauley, who cannot quite leave the life of a professional thief, as he claims he can so easily walk out of the lives of others. It is McCauley who first appears; leading a gang in a heist that, at once, depicts the realism that cuts through the rest of the film; Mann choosing to shoot on the streets of Los Angeles, and the often visceral, and realistic, violence.

The initial heist, which ends with three guards summarily executed on the streets of LA is also a perfect set of character introductions; Kevin Gage's Waingro, a barely restrained psychopath, whose chaotic trail of destruction begins with impulsively shooting a man dead, will go from a hired gun to become the gang's dark, and disturbing, shadow, whilst Val Kilmer's crook, Chris Shiherlis, is torn between following in McCauley's footsteps, and his disintegrating home life with wife, Charlene (Ashley Judd), to which McCauley has to play peacemaker. Waingro is an enjoyable unpleasant foil, a cruel and vindictive and predatory figure compared to the gentlemanly thief that De Niro cuts, and his presence in the film is uneasy even before he turns villain.

Brought in to investigate the murders of the three guards, and the theft of over $1,000,000 in bearer bonds-perhaps the only thing, as a staple of 1980s and early 90s heist movies, that dates the film alongside the telephones. Hanna picks up the case, soon discovering more death in the gang's wake, as they have been doublecrossed by money launderer Roger Van Zant (an enjoyably unpleasant William Fichtner, with musician Henry Rollins playing his fixer), and had to shoot their way out. Hanna is Pacino at his 90s best- neatly placed between the cult Carlito's Way (1993) and the double-whammy of Donnie Brasco and The Devil's Advocate (both 1997), and his presence on screen from start to finish, even as his family life collapses around him, is electric.

Whilst at least part of this comes from Pacino's decision to play the character as though they are permanently on a cocaine high-this leading to some truly outlandish moments where Pacino explodes into yelling fits, stealing the family television and throwing it out of a car, and a general unpredictability, much of its has to do with his sense of entrapment. As he and McCauley draw closer to each other, and their lives take on a curious symbiosis, so their relationships with those around them, and indeed, with their roles in each other's stories, disintegrate; McCauley eventually drives away a woman that he has fallen in love with for sating his own revenge, whilst Hanna's marriage with his wife, Justine (Diane Venora) and relationship with his troubled stepdaughter (Natalie Portman), eventually fizzles out, Hanna admitting that his life has become the pursuit of criminals.

Against these opposed figures, Mann places the stylistically, timelessly cool; his Los Angeles, particularly in the case of the night scenes where fast cars, helicopters and our two protagonists sweep through shot, is as much a character as those inhabiting it, many scenes trailing into a night often only lit by neon, distant lights or the rear-lights of cars. Yet, this Los Angeles is as much a remote, alien presence, an isolation into which violence erupts. It is in this violence that the film is at its most verité, the heist and subsequent near ten minute shootout a stunning run and gun battle turning to a grim, deafening-many of the films guns being fired for real and the entire scene planned by former SAS soldier Andy McNabb-march up the street by McCauley and his gang, as they are pursued by Hanna, all of this leading to an inevitable showdown between the two.

The film is punctuated with near-encounters between the two-there's a memorable bungled heist in which one of Hanna's men is heard, and McCauley clears his entire gang out, empty-handed. Inevitably, as each is drawn into the other's orbit, so they also find themselves unable to escape their role; Hanna admits he cannot escape his work as a detective, practically compartmentalising his life to avoid taking home the dark underbelly of the city and its sordid and violent nature, whilst, despite his apparent lack of attachments, its is his loyalty to his crew, rather than the love for the woman he befriends and later falls in love with, that sees De Niro's thief break his own rule about attachments.

It is a tension that the film carefully winds to its maximum, before releasing it, in the most memorable sequence in the film, a moment that bridges this divide between these two parallel figures, to depict that they are far closer to each other than they are different, dual obsessions on an inevitable collision course with each other. Heat is a masterfully made depiction as the detective as obsessive, forever trapped in the hunt for the criminal, shot through with Michael Mann's characteristic style to make one of the great crime films of the 1990s.

Rating: Must See

Heat is available via streaming on Disney+, and on DVD from Warner Home Video in the UK and via streaming on AppleTV, and on DVD from Warner Home Video in the USA

Next week, we reach the month of Halloween with four folk horror films, beginning with the 1957 cult horror, The Night of the Demon.

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