Heat

Expectations after Thief were high but this absolutely obliterated them. What an excellent movie. The first thing that stuck out to me is the color-grading; at least 60% of this movie is blue. It’s all blue. Never have I seen the sunny LA so cold and dark. The writing is impeccable. Al Pacino’s delivery really cracked me up a few times but his coffee scene with De Niro is definitely up there as one of the best written in cinema. Two men, two sides of the same coin, who probably understand each other better than anybody else yet they are, by nature, at odds. It’s a cat and mouse chase but also a Moby Dick kind of deal. Al Pacino’s pursuit of De Niro is obsessive and destructive to his already dysfunctional marriage. De Niro is cold, calculated, precise and meticulous but insistent on tying up loose ends and his violation of his own code ultimately dooms him, at the cost of becoming more human.  The multiple short side plots tie the story together and make this near 3 hour movie feel like a saga, like an epic of opposing sides chasing each other, while sharing unbelievably deep respect for each other and dragging so many other people into this bloody pursuit. Those last 20 minutes or so were so tense that I almost fell out of my seat how much I was leaning towards the screen. Also, RIP Val Kilmer.