Heat

I've been pretty bad about doing Retro Reviews for a while now (read: I've done none this year) and there was nothing super compelling at the theaters this weekend once I found out Hypnotic was "meh". 

Thanks to Netflix's algorithm, it seems Heat is making a push up their Top 10 list for reasons unknown and it's always been on my shameful never-seen-but-really-want-to list. Michael Mann's nearly 3 hour, 1995 crime epic is often cited in discussions around "best crime films ever" and I know enough about Christopher Nolan to understand that he's taken quite a bit of inspiration from Mann and this film. 

I really should "skip" more weekends at the movies to make time for meaningful Retro Reviews as I really enjoyed - and was very impressed - by Heat. It's painfully 90's (in the best of ways) so the nostalgia was fun, but I quickly found this was a masterclass of acting and intensity. Inspirations for films like The Dark Knight were clear and in other ways, Heat seemed to have inspired other crime epics (even if they're very different movies) like The Raid 2. 

While I found some of the subplots - particularly most of the romantic ones - to be lacking, our core cat-and-mouse conflict between Al Pacino's unhinged LAPD investigator and Robert DeNiro's measured crime boss is often intense and captivating. Key scenes, such as their discussion over coffee, are the stuff of movie magic, and their ultimate face-off had me glued to my seat. 

Everything holds up remarkably well, which is often what I reference when I feel like "old" films are no longer the same. Not so for Heat. Yes the original score - which is f**king fantastic - is as 90s as it gets with its guitar riffs, but the cinematography, editing, action, and basically everything else have aged well. It has that "timeless" feel to it, which is sincerely exciting to watch as a movie lover. 

Heat may require 3 hours of you - though being on Netflix makes it easy to pause - but I assure you it's an example of one of those "classic" films that earns that adjective. Beyond getting to see two of the greats face-off against one another, it's an exciting, riveting movie epic and there's a lot of fun to be had in seeing what films it inspired in decades since. 

Retro Rath's Review Score | 9.5/10