100 Movies Every Catholic Should See #65: Heat (1995)

Written & Directed by Michael Mann

In 1995, I was three years old. Heat released that year. So did Batman Forever. You can guess which Val Kilmer feature I was far more interested in. But in 2011? I was just exiting my freshman year of college. Already obsessed with film. This was the perfect time to experience what Christopher Nolan called the primary touchstone for his 2008 film, The Dark Knight.

Upon first glance, it’s easy to see why. The aesthetics — cool blues, dark cityscapes, sleek framing — are instantly evocative. The story about a detective’s relentless pursuit of criminals across Los Angeles is easily translatable into Christopher Nolan’s vision of Gotham City. But there is a deeper element to Heat that inspired Nolan in the first place.

When reflecting on the development process for his Dark Knight, Nolan said: "You have to look at scale in a different way. Batman Begins had been as big as we could make it. I knew we couldn’t stuff anymore in, geographically. So, you have to look at the scale in a different way. What I wound up doing is looking at it differently in terms of storytelling and cinematography. One of the biggest epic films I have ever seen is Michael Mann’s Heat. That is a true Los Angeles story, just wall-to-wall within the city. Okay, we’ll make it a city story."

Let me back up for a moment to give some background. Mann — who redefined cool with Miami Vice and made Daniel Day-Lewis into a star with The Last of the Mohicans — tried unsuccessfully to make Heat for over a decade. The epic story, inspired by real life events, was the definition of a passion project for him. After a failed attempt to turn it into a TV series, Mann sat on the project for years before finally returning to it in the wake of Mohicans’ success. His choice to wait, to keep refining it, to keep pouring more and more of himself into the story, proved to be a wise one. Mann has directed 12 theatrical films in his long, storied career — but Heat may be his best.

Mann’s choice to make Heat a “city story,” as Nolan calls it, is part of why the film remains an enduring classic that bears rewatching. Heat is no simple cops and robbers story. It’s a deeply moving morality tale about an entire city, where every choice has consequences and every life matters. Bullets may fly. Blood may be spilled. But Mann is not interested in violence for the sake of violence — he’s interested in what gives life meaning for these men, who live on the edge of a knife. Heat is a film about consequences. Every action in Mann’s Los Angeles has repercussions that effects the lives of all the players.

Speaking of those players, let’s rewind back again almost 20 years. It’s hard to overstate how big of a deal Heat’s cast was in 1995. The film promised the first onscreen pairing of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino (the two both appeared in The Godfather: Part II but never appeared onscreen at the same time). The aforementioned Kilmer, coming off the box office smash Tombstone, was one of the hottest stars of the decade. And below those three? The likes of Jon Voight, Ashley Judd, Natalie Portman, Tom Sizemore, William Fichtner, and others. The cast helped give Heat its epic feel, raising the stakes and providing even more gravitas to Mann’s vision of Los Angeles.

While many are involved in this “city story,” the film zeroes in on De Niro’s Neil McCauley and Pacino’s Vincent Hanna. As previously stated, the pairing of the two together was one of the main selling points of the film in 1995 and neither disappoint (some might even argue, in the case of De Niro, that it was his last “great” performance until Martin Scorsese’s 2019 film The Irishman).

De Niro’s McCauley is the leader of a group of thieves whose meticulousness makes them ruthlessly effective. McCauley, in particular, is obsessed with living by a strict code: "Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner." He’s a man who also, perhaps paradoxically, says “whatever time we have is luck” and wants to make the most of what he has left — a theme that runs throughout Mann’s filmography.

Mann is haunted by the shortness of time, and that motivation permeates his characters — McCauley included. Making life meaningful matters — whether that’s chasing bank robbers, longing for a limo company, or drinking mojitos in a speed boat.

The other side of McCauley’s coin is Pacino’s Hanna, a driven LAPD detective whose own obsession with his work mirrors McCauley’s. Hanna’s life is a cacophony of broken relationships and relentless pursuit. The intersection of their lives is not just a clash of hunter and hunted but a poignant exploration of two men who, in another life, might have been friends. Their meeting at a diner, over a cup of coffee — perhaps the most famous scene of the movie — transcends the typical cop-and-robber dynamic.

It's in this scene that Heat goes up a notch. Here, I can’t help but be reminded of C.S. Lewis’ words from The Weight of Glory:

All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit— immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

This is the weight that Mann brings to the proceedings in what is, perhaps, his masterpiece. The moment they share this simple cup of coffee in a diner, McCauley and Hanna recognize that each is no “mere mortal,” as Lewis writes, but rather men imbued with something more, worthy of respect.

Each man makes horrible decisions over the course of the film. But Mann shows the consequences of these choices. Nobody is left unscathed. Their sins leave scars that only grow more visible as the film barrels towards its conclusion. Do McCauley, Hanna, and the rest end the movie as immortal horrors or everlasting splendors? That is a question each viewer needs to ask themselves. But the fact that Mann imbues his film with that kind of question is a testament to his uncompromising vision. This is no simple tale of cops and robbers. Heat is something far, far more.

In a film full of memorable set pieces — none bigger than the Los Angeles shootout in the middle of the film that is as harrowing as it as defining as an action sequence — it’s the smaller moments, the intimate conversations, that elevate the film. That transform Heat into the classic that it is today. Conversations over cups of coffee. A simple look between a husband and wife that saves both lives. A longing look over the Pacific Ocean. I present two final ones as well: a lingering shot of a Pieta at the beginning, and a shot of one man holding another in the finale. 

The film may have released in postmodern America, but, over and over again, the film reaches back to a different kind of morality. One where life matters. Where, rather than feeling triumph at death, men instead feel sorrow. Heat is not an easy film by any stretch of the imagination. Its length alone — nearly three hours — demands something more of a viewer. But, the famous diner scene and the crushing finale of Heat provide signposts, pointing back towards what Lewis wrote about so famously.

In a different filmmaker’s hands, Heat could be a weightless heist movie. The countless imitators that have come out since prove that. But in Mann’s hands, Heat achieves “the weight of glory.”